I haven’t been able to post here much lately because of work and life and whatnot, but after the Medical Library Association conference (#mlanet12) wraps up next week, things should loosen up a bit.

This year, MLA, the  professional association for medical librarians, is having its annual conference in Seattle, WA. I’ve never been there and am looking forward to it. At the conference, I’m presenting in a section on building successful collaborations, facilitating a roundtable on librarian involvement in systematic reviews, attending the government relations committee meeting as a member, and am serving as an official conference blogger. My posts on things seen and learned in the conference exhibit hall – my area of coverage – will be up here. Oh, yeah, I’m also attending a tweet up and participating in a zombie hunt, and hoping to see some old friends while I’m there.

I’ve also had recent posts up at Our Bodies Our Blog, on long-term bisphosphonate use, a recent CDC report on teen girls’ sexual activity and use of contraceptives, and recent research into progesterone-alone for menopausal hot flashes. There’s something I’m enthused about coming out of OBOS soon, and after MLA wraps up I’ll share that here as well, but watch the site and blog for news.

I’m also hitting the one-year mark now on being car-free in Nashville, TN. I have it in mind to do one or more posts on that experience soon, as well. Thankfully, I’ll be off work and home for 5 days after returning from the conference, during which there will be some blogging and probably a lot of Diablo III and WoW.

Oh, and lest anybody get any ideas about my being out of town – the house will be guarded by the spouse, the attack kitties, and the huge dog seen in the top left.

Filed under: Events & Observances, Miscellaneous

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I want to work on this blog going forward – and obviously I’ve been thinking about that more than I’ve actually been posting here. Women’s Health News has been around since May 2005, and has always focused on women’s health – but tending to focus on reproductive health and rights, and always with my own kind of feminist take on the politics. The last several years have provided plenty of fodder in that area – the constant churn of anti-woman, anti-choice attacks is a source of material, but it’s also somewhat tiring. Just when you think you’re getting somewhere, things get Sebeliused.

The question is, what do I want to get out of it, and am I getting that out of it now, more than 5 years in. I’ve never been doing this for recognition, or to spin into a book deal, or to take over my own corner of some feminist/repro rights blogging empire. I get an amount of traffic I’m happy with. I get fewer comments than I’d like, and wonder about how useful long form stuff or pointing people to important information is when people can get everything, everywhere, in short snippets – or at least feel like they do.

I get some good things out of this – I’ve met a lot of great people, I get to practice forming arguments or compiling information and writing about them in a coherent way, and it forces me to always, always, keep reading and learning.

I’m unwilling and unable to do the kind of constant cross-commenting and link promotion and building stables of bloggers and community bloggers and contests and so on that seems to be part of the slick blogging machine these days.

I don’t know, I think I’m just looking at the new year, and deciding that I either need to stop worrying about not posting some poorly-defined “enough,” or put in the work to post more. I’d like more comments in a click/reshare age, but I’m not sure we’re going back there without more work than I’m willing to put in on building commenters just for the sake of it.

Is it enough to put information out there and hope it’s useful to someone who sees it when they need it? I’m a librarian – you’d think I’d have a firm answer on that subject.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

A few things that have caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

Over at Nature, which is *supposed* to be a respectable publication, Ed Rybicki wrote some utter unfunny bullshit in Parallel Processing, in which men hunt, women gather, and HA HA, WOMEN are so good at SHOPPING because they can ACCESS A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Because of how women and men are just so inherently different in a binary, unknowable-to-men way. LOLLERSKATES. Christie Wilcox over at Scientific American’s Science Sushi has the more mature response.

At another Scientific American blog, Kate Clancy talks about menstrual synchrony and why women might not really synchronize their cycles.

Rock Center has a segment on involuntary sterilization in North Carolina that disproportionately targeted women of color.

Health News Reviews takes a look at media coverage of a study on preventive mastectomy.

The draft research review for Closing the Quality Gap Series: Quality Improvement Interventions to Address Health Disparities is online (free) and open to public comment through Dec 15. (via BHIC)

eeshap at the Crunk Feminist Collective writes about diamonds and conflict, and why care in purchasing is not enough – we must make choices that devalue the diamond in society and therefore reduce diamond mining-related incentives to cruelty.

A clear photographic example of the way products for children reinforce gendered steretypes, in the form of magnetic words for boys and girls. Here, boys get the moon, a wizard, and a dragon, while girls get a diamond, perfume, and make-up. Oh, and bunnies.

Lena Chen has a guide to/review of some sex toys. The separate files for this article are totally unwieldy, but there is some good info therein.

I haven’t spent much time on the site yet, but here is the inevitable OccupyHealthcare. One thing they’re talking about is health information and responsibility for health literacy.

Jill Filipovic talks at the Guardian about the long game for personhood amendments.

The FDA revoked its approval of Avastin for metastatic breast cancer treatment.

Kotex has recalled a whole bunch of tampons.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Drugs, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

Some things that caught my attention this week, with bonus “this week in misogyny” content.

I don’t know how many people noticed, and I assume it won’t go anywhere, but Michele Bachmann introduced a forced ultrasound for abortion bill in the House. It’s been sent to the Subcommittee on Health.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has launched a new website, Bedsider, about birth control and says it’s intended for women ages 18-29 years. I haven’t looked through it thoroughly, but it includes comparisons of different methods of preventing pregnancy by factors like cost, immediacy, STI prevention, ease of getting and using the method, ease of hiding it from a partner, and degree of mistake-proofed-ness. It is focused through a pregnancy prevention lens, so the site is focused on penis-in-vagina sex, not other forms of sex or prevention. I haven’t reviewed the site thoroughly, but let me know what you think. Some of the language seems a little, uh, teen magazine-y for my tastes and for a target audience that is actually made up of adults, but perhaps it’s my advanced age talking there (early 30s).

Over at OBOS, between C and I we’ve covered Mississippi, personhood, and reproductive justice, and new research on in vitro fertilization and ovarian cancer risks.

The CDC released the final data on 2009 births [PDF] in the United States. It’s full of data on the number of births, birth rates by things about women, like their age and marital status, and rates of cesarean (another all-time high), low birth weight, preterm, and out of hospital births. [hat tip to Jill]

Jaclyn Friedman, who I met briefly at the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th, has a new book out, What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a Twitter chat happening at 9pm Eastern tonight using the hashtag #shamefreesex.

B points out the ridiculousness of news coverage taking the “vodka-soaked tampon” story seriously. Notably, liquid-soaked tampons expand and are not exactly convenient for insertion. Aside from which, alcohol+mucous membranes would probably hurt. And the likelihood of it being widespread for teenage boys to be inserting said vodka-soaked tampons rectally is just absurdly small. And then there was the follow-up to B’s post, which takes a quick downward spiral in the comments to “if we take your picture without permission but link to you, you should be glad of the traffic”-land.

The FDA released a new statement on Makena, a drug intended to help prevent preterm birth. It has been the subject of controversy because versions of the same ingredient in Makena has been available for pretty cheap through compound pharmacies for a long time. FDA’s approval of Makena with it’s extremely high price, have generated strong reactions and concerns about access. The FDA’s new statement basically says, “The company that makes Makena says those vastly cheaper compound pharmacy products vary in their strength and purity, so we’re going to look into it.”

The agency also approved the first therapy derived from cord blood cells.

Jill at Feministe had a note left in her suitcase by the TSA when she checked what she’s referring to as a “personal item.” A note that read, “get your freak on girl.” Jill follows up that the TSA agent who left that note has been suspended, and Jill responds to the lack of response to the real problem here: “…I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake.”

This week, the CDC is running a campaign focused on the smart and appropriate use of antibiotics. Go to the website to learn more about why you don’t always need antibiotics and why it’s bad for all of us to use too many.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on November 20th.

The Abortioneers ask when to speak up, when to keep your mouth shut, and how to know the difference.

The fact that women prisoners often get shackled during labor is discussed at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, in an interview with a fiction writer who covered this practice in a book.

Sometime this week, I stumbled across #occupyhealthcare and the accompanying website. The contributors seem to be mostly healthcare providers and adjacents, focused on increasing access to healthcare.

The government has issued a “Leading Health Indicators App Challenge,” soliciting developers to create apps that promote the use of key measures of health (“indicators”) to improve the health of communities.

The Census released new data with the headline, “Half of First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave, Census Bureau Reports.” Before you get too excited, “paid” leave included not just official paid maternity leave, but using up your own existing balance of paid sick and/or vacation leave, if you’re fortunate enough to have that. They also noted that women who got some type of paid leave were *more* likely to return to work within 3-5 months, making me wonder if they are often returning to work when they exhaust their reserves of paid sick or other time. Then there’s this limitation: “Given that FMLA and other leave policies in the United States do not allow for leave for more than 12 weeks, it is not entirely surprising that new mothers return to work relatively soon.”

ePatientDave writes about how impossible to understand an “explanation of benefits” document can be and how we’re prevented from stopping errors and reducing costs because of this lack of transparency.

This week in misogyny:
Rick Perry’s “departments I would close” gaffe has received most of the news coverage, but in the same GOP candidate debate, Herman Cain referred to Representative/former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy.” He or his team reiterated this remark on Twitter, before offering the fauxpology that he “probably shouldn’t have” made the remark, but “was trying to make a point.” A point that required a gendered diminishing and dismissal of a powerful woman politician, apparently. I guess he thought he had built up too much goodwill with women over the course of his sexual harassment scandal.

Using the #mencallmethings hashtag (which Sady Doyle apparently started), feminist women bloggers took to Twitter to talk about some of the vile things that have been said to them in the course of their writing, including rape and death threats. I contributed a rape threat I received through the comments here because I had the temerity to dislike a rape joke on tv. Just another humorless feminist who deserved threats of violence because of it, right? @metalmujer and others pointed out that the hashtag itself would be better focused on misogyny rather than “men.” Yes, most of the excessively hateful and threatening remarks I’ve been subjected to have been made by men, but the problem is not something about all men, it’s the misogyny these particular men have carried out and a culture that encourages them to do so.

I also keep seeing this image on Facebook intended at a critique of dubstep and its fans. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the actual quality of dubstep or its fans over time, but I do know that when the main critique is presented as “it was good when it was a bunch of men standing around, now it sucks and is by/for little girls,” that’s misogyny.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Web Resources

Yesterday, Tennessee’s Governor instituted new rules limiting public demonstrations in Legislative Plaza (state public land) to specific hours and requiring daily approval of permits which will cost $65. After stating that the permit process would not be in place until this morning, the government sent police in in the middle of the night to remove Occupy Nashville demonstrators under the guise of a newly implemented curfew. 75 state troopers were sent to arrest 29 protesters. Below is the text of the letter I just sent to the Governor’s office in response:

Governor Haslam,

I am writing to express my concern about the sudden implementation of limited demonstration hours in Legislative Plaza and insistence on permits and curfews in this public space. While many areas do require permits for large events in public spaces, the creation of these rules mid-event suggests a desire to specifically interrupt Occupy Nashville efforts. It is profoundly disturbing to consider whether permits may be required or denied based upon whether the demonstration’s focus finds favor with state government, especially when the focus of dissent is the government itself. The suggestion by Bill Gibbons that others using or traveling through the Plaza outside of curfew hours would get a pass depending on their circumstances further suggests an intention to enforce the new rules inequitably.

I am also disturbed by the contradiction between clear reports that enforcement would not happen until today, and the frankly sneaky manner in which the curfew issue was employed to provide cover for removing people who had a reasonable belief that they would not need to clear out of the public space until today, and to do so when the least possible media would be present.

I’ve already viewed elsewhere the generic response sent to others who have written on this issue, the meat of which is:

“While this administration wholeheartedly supports freedom of speech, assembly and petition, it is our responsibility to keep people safe on state property. Abiding by these hours allows for a safe event, while ensuring the people’s right to peaceably assemble.”

I am certain you don’t mean to imply that it is only possible to keep people safe on state property during the hours of 9am to 4pm, the hours for which permits may ostensibly be approved. If so, I would expect that safety should also be a concern during the additional non-curfew hours,* 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am. There is no apparent rationale for the failure to align these hours and allow permits for assembly during the full 6am to 10pm time frame. The most charitable reading of this mismatch is a governmental unwillingness to provide for the proper security during some hours for those in exercise of their Constitutional liberties on public land. A less charitable read of this mismatch would suggest that it is the specific intent of the Governor’s office to limit the exercise of free speech and assembly by forbidding such activities on state land during the hours which most people have off work, thereby reducing the numbers of people who may participate in such activities.

Free speech and assembly are perhaps the most sacred rights of Americans, the tools which provide for all other rights to be acquired and defended. Interfering with these rights in such a manner is unconscionable. I urge you to rescind this misguided action and restore the exercise of constitutional freedoms to Legislative Plaza.

Regards,
Rachel R. Walden
Nashville, TN

*Added: above, where it says, “during the additional non-curfew hours, 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am” – I don’t think my wording was clear initially. Those are the hours in which people are allowed to be in the Plaza and not under curfew, but demonstrations are not being allowed.

I’d like to also offer my thanks and kudos to Night Court Magistrate Tom Nelson who refused to sign criminal trespass warrants for the protesters taken into custody.

Here’s what some other folks have had to say. I am particularly enjoying Aunt B’s writings on the subject.

There are a lot of mammals in this house.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

First up, links on the Memphis/family planning situation I wrote about last week. As a brief reminder, Title X family planning funds have been assigned to a Christian religious organization that has expressed an intent to deny services, information, and referrals to women based on the organization’s religious beliefs.

LeftWingCracker points out that three Democrats voted for this nonsense. Also: CCHC is going to need more than prayers; CCHC is talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Aunt B, in Early November is in Two Weeks, looks at Christ Community *complaining* because patients are being sent to them and they don’t have the capacity to deal with them yet.

At the DowntownMemphisBlog, Planned Parenthood Responds to the CCHS Debacle – includes suggestions for action.

Wendi Thomas at the Commercial Appeal: “Poor patients seeking family planning care have lost access to free services at the familiar agency that had been federally funded to provide them for more than 35 years, and the new, evangelical one isn’t yet able to help.”

On to the rest…

Look, I think we all said profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things as young people. Some of us continue to say profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things well into adulthood. If you’re a nursing student, though, you probably ought to think twice about expressing extreme animosity towards women and their healthcare needs in a public forum. Ema at the Well-Timed Period covers the case of Ben Cochrane, ECU nursing student who wrote that women getting birth control through the campus student health clinic should “Go read your Redbook in the lobby of a specialist as you wait to get your lady-bits inspected. Leave Student Health for those of us that are in actual need of medical attention.” See Ema’s two posts.

Birthing Beautiful Ideas makes a list of What Pregnant Women Want, and Deserve.” I’d add a lot more race, justice, and privilege-related things to it.

On that note, Miriam Zoila Pérez writes about work to stop women prisoners from being shackled during labor.

HealthNewsReviews critiques recent coverage of a mammography/false positives study.

A baby health thing: the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that parents should not use any type of crib bumper pad: “Bumper pads should not be used in cribs. There is no evidence that bumper pads prevent injuries, and there is a potential risk of suffocation, strangulation or entrapment”

Wal-Mart is reverting back to providing no and shitty health insurance coverage for its workers. Hey, if people can’t find other jobs, might as well screw ‘em, right Wal-Mart?

Gender Focus lays out some reasons Why Abortion Care Needs to be Fully Funded.

From Latoya Peterson at Racialicious: The Tits Have It: Sexism, Character Design, and the Role of Women in Created Worlds – “And there it was, the truth about character design that so many players know but most designers wouldn’t usually articulate: most of the egregiously sexist character designs are based on fuckability, rather than playability.”

Renee at Womanist Musings points to a calendar in which men are posed in ways that women are stereotypically posed as objects for viewing. It’s easy to see how awkward, unnatural and ridiculous these poses are when you see men performing them. She also has a great post on a controversial, bullshit poster from one of the SlutWalk events.

It’s about time: “The subcommittee recommends a broader definition, to include anal and oral rape, as well as rapes involving male victims.” – FBI may expand its definition of rape.

On the abysmal state of LGBT curricula in medical schools: “The median reported total time dedicated to LGBT topics in all four years of medical school was five hours. 76 percent of programs self-rated their curriculum as “fair” or worse.”

This week’s edition title: After going to Boston for Our Bodies Ourselves’s 40th anniversary shindig, I caught a cold/respiratory infection that has left me feeling awful for the past two weeks. I actually took sick time from work, which I’m lucky to have but almost never use. I skipped my drawing class, wouldn’t drink coffee, and sat around complaining about how I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. Things are mostly back to normal now.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, Government, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

BeauSoleil

Last weekend, I attended the National Folk Festival in Nashville, TN, where it will be hosted for two additional years. I truly enjoyed the event, seeing and hearing music performed by old time, mariachi, Kurdish, Japanese, breakdance, cajun, New Orleans jazz, and other bands, along with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Lloyd Arneach (a Cherokee storyteller). I heard good music, had good (festival) food, and had an excellent time.

That said, two health-related items came to my attention. First, I would like to suggest that first aid folks at outdoor events add extra sunscreen to their supplies. Overheating and dehydration is an obvious concern at an outdoor festival, but sunburn is another, if less acute, health hazard. I stopped by the first aid tent to see if they had any sunscreen after I’d been outside for a few hours and realized I needed more protection. I should have brought my own as well on that 100 degree sunny day, but I think making it available for people to reapply at day-long events is a good idea. The person I talked to at the tent seemed to think so, too.

Don Vappie & The Creole Jazz Serenaders

Second, while festival sponsors seemed to be mostly arts/culture organizations, local radio, lawyers, banks, and so on – the mix you’d expect – one tent in particular was sponsored by Altria, and visibly marked with numerous sponsorship signs listing Philip Morris, Smokeless Tobacco, et al. That tent was the Jefferson Street tent.

For those who don’t know Nashville, Jefferson Street is a historically Black part of town. It runs past Meharry Medical College and Fisk University, then TSU, all HCBUs. It’s home to an annual jazz and blues festival. This page from the Jefferson Street Merchants provides a brief history of the area, further emphasizing the close association between this part of Nashville and our city’s Black population. The Jefferson Street stage was the closest at the festival to Jefferson Street itself by a long shot.

Well, so what? Black and white Americans smoke about the same rate, but Black smokers are a greater risk of lung cancer and suffer disproportionately from smoking-related adverse health effects. Tobacco companies have also targeted their advertising to Black communities, attempting to recruit more of these smokers – one study found “2.6 times more tobacco advertisements per person in areas with an African American majority compared to white-majority areas.” As the American Lung Association explains:

African American communities have been bombarded with cigarette advertising. Since the signing of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in 1998 through 2005, the average youth in the United States is annually exposed to 559 tobacco ads, every adult female 617 advertisements, and every African American adult 892 ads. Money spent on magazine advertising of mentholated cigarettes, popular with African Americans, increased from 13 percent of total ad expenditures in 1998 to 49 percent in 2005.

The former Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company (now part of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company) ran a campaign for Kool cigarettes aimed at black youths in 2006 that featured hip-hop DJ competitions, themed cigarette packs, and was billed as a “celebration” of hip-hop music and culture.

Long story short, having the “Jefferson Street” stage visibly sponsored by big tobacco was unseemly and gross, in the context of both the location and the deliberate targeting of Black communities to encourage smoking.

Filed under: Advertising/Marketing, Cancer, Ethics, Events & Observances, Miscellaneous

CC BY-SA 2.0, dain of the iron hills

Until I started trying it myself, I honestly did not understand why food deserts are defined in such a short radius – surely people 1-2 miles from a grocery story, even without a car, can’t really have *that* hard a time getting to food, right?

Wrong.

I have been without a car for about 3 months now, and have to spend a good chunk of time planning around and acquiring food. There are a number of challenges to getting around a city like Nashville – not known for great transit options – without a car. Below, I’m sharing some of my methods, challenges, helpful supplies, and privileges that make things easier for me but which suggest how difficult getting to food in a food desert can really be. It’s clear to me that some of the tools I use to make things mostly work are not available to everyone, and that access to fresh food you can cook at home is a real challenge when one is car-free by necessity or choice.

How I Get Around: workplace shuttle; walking; taxis; rides from gracious people; ZipCars; city bus.

Despite having a graduate degree, I sometimes find the bus schedules confusing – I can’t imagine what they are like for someone with low literacy or other difficulty processing that type of information. Our local city transit authority has two “route finder” tools on its website, and they each give different results, times, and route recommendations in response to the same input. Some buses – including one close to me – don’t run at all on weekends. I have typically found that it’s faster to actually walk to the nearest grocery store than it is to get to and ride the bus.

Walking obviously presents challenges in extreme weather, and raises issues of pedestrian and neighborhood safety. In general, I have to do much more planning for how to get to and from everything, and can’t really spontaneously just go pick up this or that thing. This is good for reducing my consumerism, but bad when there is one thing I need and it’s not available anywhere nearby. There is no simple, quick running out to pick up a key ingredient here – it may not even be available anywhere within a reasonable walking distance.

How I Get Food
Once a month or so, I’ll get a ZipCar, go to the grocery store, and stock up on non-perishable items like cat food, toilet paper, and freezer and pantry items. When I’ve done this trip walking, it’s an hour each way with spotty sidewalks – I definitely recommend having more than one person or one of those grocery carts if you’re going to walk. My aunt, who is a bus driver, says that some people use rolling luggage, which seems like a reasonable, if weird-looking, idea.

There is farmer’s market on the workplace campus once a week, but I have to make sure not to get carried away. It’s easy to pick a few things that are surprisingly heavy (like watermelons and milk in glass bottles) without thinking about how hard it will be to walk with everything. I can really only use this farmers’ market to supplement my bulk purchases, but it’s nice to support local farmers through these purchases. After the monthly stock up, the farmers’ market is how I keep fresh produce in my diet. Still, there is less than I’d like, because everything has to be planned in advance and can’t just be picked up as the mood for some particular good meal strikes.

I also walk to nearby international and convenience markets – I’m in an area of town with a good number of these. A lot of the products here are pretty much the polar opposite of local goods, but many of these are locally owned small businesses. I can find things like some produce, condiments and canned goods, and even fresh sandwiches or frozen fish.

Sometimes, I just have to have a pizza delivered. There are pretty much no really healthy delivery options in this town, especially for small orders outside of lunch hours, so it’s pizza or Chinese when I need food brought to me. GoWaiter, a restaurant delivery service, has become available in Nashville, which provides a few more healthy options from a limited set of restaurants – the costs can add up quickly if ordering too often, though. There used to be a grocery delivery service, but it closed a couple of years ago, and prices were typically a little higher than I think would be reasonable for regular use in a neighborhood like mine (which is not a high-income area).

Some privileges I have that make it easier, which not everybody has access to:

• Two thirtysomething bodies without asthma, disability, or any limitations that make it especially unsafe to deal with extreme heat and heat-related air pollution or make us unable to get around by walking – often with the need to carry things.

• Access to ZipCars, which are only located at university campuses in Nashville. I happen to work at one of those campuses, and am able to take a shuttle or city bus to it for free. I also got a discounted subscription rate for ZipCar thanks to my university affiliation.
• Money to sometimes just take a taxi.
• No kids, so no little people who have to be watched while I take up to three hours to get to the store and back, or who have to tag along with no sidewalks and 90+ degree temps.
• Constant access to the internet at work and home. This makes it easy to quickly look up walking routes, directions, and the dreaded bus schedules. When I need to figure out to/if I can get somewhere, I turn to the internet.
• Friends and colleagues with cars, who give me rides when it’s just too hot or hailing or I way overdid it at the farmers’ market.
• Initial access to a rental car in order to do the first stock up on food and other supplies at the beginning; money to buy those supplies and more than a week’s worth of food at a time. I get paid monthly – if I got paid weekly, I think it would be a lot harder to make sure to save up a chunk for monthly stocking up.

Without these things, it would be much harder for me to even approach a semi-healthy diet. When you can only make limited trips to the store and have to stock up, it’s hard to stock up on healthier foods like fruits and vegetables, which go bad faster, and there’s only so much freezer space for those.

Helpful Gear:
These are some of the things I picked up or had on hand that really help. This is the summer list – in the winter I’m going to need to make sure to have gloves, a hat and scarf, a good coat, and the like.

• backpack, and/or luggage or cart for hauling the actual groceries

• umbrella – smaller type that fits well in the backpack
• rain jacket – I suggest *both* the umbrella and rain jacket. It’s hard to overestimate how wet you can get walking home in a downpour.
• wide brimmed hat with a chin strap – I don’t wear sunglasses a lot because I wear regular glasses, but a hat helps. The strap is useful so you don’t have to tie up a hand keeping your hat on your head on windy days.
• good walking shoes (so much for “good” – the pair I bought two months ago has already ripped at one seam, and customer service hasn’t responded)
• sunscreen
• reusable water bottle

Have questions? Tried car-free in a food desert yourself and have tips to share? Let me know in the comments.

Note: technically, according to the USDA’s food desert locator, my particular neighborhood is not a food desert, although we are right next to one. This may be because more people in my neighborhood have a car or have slightly higher incomes, parts of the equation for determining whether an area is considered a food desert. The nearest grocery, however, *is* more than a mile away, and I would consider my neighborhood to have serious problems of access to healthy food, especially without a car. We are one area that has been targeted in the past by local efforts to increase access to healthy foods. Effectively, a food desert.

PS-If you use the referral link to the right to sign up for ZipCar, available in most major cities, we can each get a $25 credit. I don’t have any financial relationship with the company except being a member/customer.

Added: there is some good discussion in the comments now about bicycles, which is something I didn’t address in the post because I haven’t acquired one yet and am not sure how well I would do on a bike.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Health, Miscellaneous

I haven’t done one of these in a while, having been distracted by the heat, the carless situation, dad’s cancer, mom’s hip replacement re-replacement, work, leveling my first character in Warcraft (now a level 71 undead frost mage – I don’t want to duel you!), and life in general. Tonight, though, I’m at my parents’ house (sitting with mom after said re-replacement), in a town with <30 thousand people that gets really, truly dark at night, World of Warcraft won't run on this computer, and I think I've reached the end of the internet. Might as well do something.

The FDA has issued a warning not to use emergency contraception labeled as Evital. The agency says,

These products may be counterfeit versions of the “morning after pill” and may not be safe or effective in preventing pregnancy. Evital has not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. This potentially ineffective and suspect counterfeit emergency birth control may also be in distribution in some Hispanic communities in the United States.

The FDA announcement linked above has an image of the packaging for the drug in question and further details.

The FDA is also proposing guidelines for mobile medical apps (like you use on a smart phone). I haven’t fully parsed the implications of the proposal yet, but public comment is being accepted through October 19.

CNN has a piece on breast ironing in Cameroon. This is not a custom I know much about, and I’m always hesitant to jump in where I know so little, but I feel comfortable saying that this must be a painful procedure that doesn’t achieve the apparently desired goal of preventing sex ad pregnancy.

The New York Times talks about Title IX, the law requiring that women and girls have equal access to participation in school sports, focusing on a lack of investigation and enforcement when schools are thought to not be following the law.

Washington became the first state to specifically provide for offspring from donated eggs and sperm to access the donors’ medical history and names once the offspring turn 18. This is an issue I’ve written a tiny bit about at Our Bodies Our Blog.

Shockingly, Bill O’Reilly is kind of an uninformed jerk about unintentional pregnancy and birth control. The professional blowhard stated that “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex and are not going to use birth control anyway.” Right. Half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and it’s obviously just because women are too drunk and high to use contraception. A lot of attention has been paid to this comment, but O’Reilly also stated in the same segment that HHS should pay for “everybody’s birth control, all the women in the world, or here in the United States, or maybe both.” Yeah, we’re going to pay for birth control for *all the women in the world* – even those women in the many countries with lower rates of teen and unplanned pregnancy. Sure, that seems likely and logical and fact-based, doesn’t it? *headdesk* Media Matters has more, including response from the National Women’s Law Center.

C-section rates apparently hit an all-time U.S. high of 34%. I feel like “new high” is the news we get every year now on c-sections.

Al Jazeera English has a short piece on the ethics of clinical pharmaceutical research in India, where research participants may not clinically benefit from drugs being tested and may be vulnerable to exploitation.

Max Barry has a nice piece about gender through the lens of how we gender animals and the gender of Smurfs.

Kari Paul at the Ms. Blog explores the topic of sexual assault on campuses and the lack of arrests or serious addressing of this problem.

Connecticut added gender identity and expression to the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Good job, Connecticut!

Anita Sarkeesian talks about the “mystical pregnancy trope,” especially in sci fi/fantasy, in which women are used for their reproductive capacity and often forcibly impregnated. I hadn’t really noticed it as much as I should, maybe you haven’t either – check out the video (via Sociological Images).

Hey, it’s World Breastfeeding Week.

Honestly, I can watch True Blood as a bit of fluff and as somebody who likes to see on-screen adaptations of books. There are a lot of problems with it. Watching tonight’s episode, I really wondered how many gratuitous rape scenes one show can possibly have, especially after Alan Ball’s comment on the serial rape of Jason that he’s basically getting what he deserved for his sexual history. Feminist Frequency also has some TB commentary and links to more.

Relatedly but not surprisingly, the blogger at The Frisky wrote critically today about how True Blood handles rape, and the very first comment is of the “relax/don’t watch then” variety. Don’t worry your pretty little head! *predictable-but-disappointing-argh*

I’m proud of our Nashville students who came out to protest stupid, offensive, and mean “don’t say gay” legislation in Tennessee.

Apparently one place in Minnesota has similar “don’t say gay” rules in its schools; CNN covered the issue and the National Center for Lesbian Rights has a letter you can sign onto to express your support for students in the affected school district who are trying to change the policy.

The CDC is talking about antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood of North Texas clinic. The clinic provides health care, including birth control and screenings, but doesn’t even provide abortions. Alex Pareene at Salon’s War Room points out that nobody seems to care about this form of domestic terrorism.

Last but not least, everybody wish Hilary luck on her last board exam and subsequent residency application process.

1) It’s the attack kitty edition because, in noting on Facebook that I am away from home, I told the Internet not to get any ideas – the house is guarded by the spouse, attack kitties, and weirdly commandable suits of armor.
2) Yes, I suspect there are some conversations we could have about gender and Warcraft. If you want to talk about that, we can do so in the comments.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Breastfeeding, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Events & Observances, Global Issues, Government, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Products, Technology, & Devices

The local newspaper is covering genetic tests for breast cancer, privacy, gene tests patents, cost, and the fears some people have about getting tested.

Iris Carmen at Jezebel has a piece, “The Fight For Abortion Access For Military Women,” that is really about barriers in the military that prevent women from reporting sexual assault, the institutional difficulties faced by women servicemembers who become pregnant, and their lack of access to abortion coverage and providers.

Via the CDC’s National Prevention Intervention Network (@cdcnpin)

Follow @CDCNPIN@CDCNPIN
CDC NPIN

#30years ago today, @CDCMMWR reported on 1st cases of what became known as #AIDS. http://ow.ly/59vq3

June 5, 2011 8:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

The link in the tweet goes to the actual June 5, 1981 MMWR reporting 5 cases of Pneumocystis Pneumonia in Los Angeles. It’s sort of a punch in the gut to read the opening passage of the editorial note – where the MMWR tries to explain what might be going on – knowing what was coming, what these 5 cases were the canary for. Warning for reference to a “homosexual lifestyle.”

Editorial Note: Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients. The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population.

Via a librarian attending the Biomedical Informatics course at Woods Hole (#bmispring2011), I learned about the Office of Research Integrity’s page of summaries of closed research misconduct investigations. The cases seem to consist primarily of researchers making up or faking data or figures.

Thought Catalog (with which I’m unfamiliar) has “Tale of an Abortion,” one woman’s story of her choice to have an abortion.

Some Indiana politicians voted to defund Planned Parenthood, which received federal Medicaid/Title X funding for non-abortion health care, like cancer screenings and contraception. In response, HHS sent the state a letter explaining that they could not “exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider’s scope of practice.” In other words, you can’t keep somebody from providing Medicaid-funded care just because they also provide non-Medicaid-funded abortions. Apparently it’s going to court.

The Feminist Majority Foundation reports in their feminist daily news that Yale Faces Possible Fines for Failure to Report Sex Crimes.

People.com associate editor Janet Mock writes for Marie Claire about her life as a transgender woman. She also was interviewed for NPR’s Tell Me More; a couple of the commenters note the inappropriate headline given the piece, which used “transgender” as a noun.

Notes from Libraryland:
The Wall Street Journal has a commentary that shouts “you kids get offa my lawn” at current YA fiction, which is apparently too dystopian, depressing, dark, and dangerous for young folks. There’s been a pretty awesome outpouring in defense of (YA) books on Twitter, using the #yasaves hashtag, with many reporting how alone, uninformed, afraid, sheltered, isolated, etc. they would have been if not for YA fiction, which can particularly be a lifeline for people who find that they are different in some way.

Also? It’s pretty hilarious that alongside an article decrying dystopia, darkness, and destruction in current YA fiction, and looks approvingly at efforts to keep those bad, bad YA books out of the hands of kids, a recommended, apparently-officially-okay title is Fahrenheit 451. Excuse me while I step away for a giggle break.

Here’s a 1971 letter from Isaac Asimov to future patrons of a new library. The Troy, MI library in question is in danger of closing if local folks don’t vote this August to fund it.

Apparently there will soon be swag for the National Library of Medicine’s 175th anniversary. This appeals to a special type of library geek.

Via searching on the #yasaves topic, I found this list of YA book recommendations, and have added several of these to my to-read list. Worth checking out.

The title: It has been 95 degrees here for the last week. I’m still walking 2.5 miles outside every day and have a broken a/c at home. If this is May, I might have to move to Antarctica in August.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Cancer, Funny, Government, HIV/AIDS, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

I’ve been walking about a mile and a quarter each morning and each evening as I travel from my house to a free parking lot for work that runs a shuttle to the main campus. It’s a longer walk but a faster trip than catching the city bus to work because it goes directly to work without stops or transfers. Before the current carless situation started, I was walking for 20-30 minutes on my lunch break each day.

With every walk, I was developing really bad pain in my legs, in an area I can only describe as the outside sides of my lower leg. Not my shins, not my calves, not my ankles – but if you are in a chair, and you bend over, putting your hand where your fingertips touch the bumpy bone of your ankle, the pain is about where my fingers stop and my palm begins, and forward.

You can tell I’m not up on my anatomy.

Anyway, Joel noticed that I was turning my feet out a little as I walked. Following that, I found that I don’t hurt so much – like “maybe I just need to quit walking and live right here” much – if I make a concerted effort to point my feet forward. Another librarian on FriendFeed seems to experience the same problem.

So I’m retraining myself to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt. It seems to only be an issue when I’m pushing myself to walk fast – not during casual walks, and I don’t jog/run with my feet turned the same way.

If you experience the same thing, maybe you just walk funny! Like me!

And, yeah, it should probably be “funnily” as an adverb, but I just don’t like that as much.

So, any med/nursing students want to tell me what the muscle on the outside sides of my lower legs is that I’m straining? Any favorite anatomy reference works you use? I could just look it up, but I find many of the anatomy websites I have access to to be hard to use and just plain annoying.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

I’ve been walking about a mile and a quarter each morning and each evening as I travel from my house to a free parking lot for work that runs a shuttle to the main campus. It’s a longer walk but a faster trip than catching the city bus to work because it goes directly to work without stops or transfers. Before the current carless situation started, I was walking for 20-30 minutes on my lunch break each day.

With every walk, I was developing really bad pain in my legs, in an area I can only describe as the outside sides of my lower leg. Not my shins, not my calves, not my ankles – but if you are in a chair, and you bend over, putting your hand where your fingertips touch the bumpy bone of your ankle, the pain is about where my fingers stop and my palm begins, and forward.

You can tell I’m not up on my anatomy.

Anyway, Joel noticed that I was turning my feet out a little as I walked. Following that, I found that I don’t hurt so much – like “maybe I just need to quit walking and live right here” much – if I make a concerted effort to point my feet forward. Another librarian on FriendFeed seems to experience the same problem.

So I’m retraining myself to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt. It seems to only be an issue when I’m pushing myself to walk fast – not during casual walks, and I don’t jog/run with my feet turned the same way.

If you experience the same thing, maybe you just walk funny! Like me!

And, yeah, it should probably be “funnily” as an adverb, but I just don’t like that as much.

So, any med/nursing students want to tell me what the muscle on the outside sides of my lower legs is that I’m straining? Any favorite anatomy reference works you use? I could just look it up, but I find many of the anatomy websites I have access to to be hard to use and just plain annoying.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

I’ve been walking about a mile and a quarter each morning and each evening as I travel from my house to a free parking lot for work that runs a shuttle to the main campus. It’s a longer walk but a faster trip than catching the city bus to work because it goes directly to work without stops or transfers. Before the current carless situation started, I was walking for 20-30 minutes on my lunch break each day.

With every walk, I was developing really bad pain in my legs, in an area I can only describe as the outside sides of my lower leg. Not my shins, not my calves, not my ankles – but if you are in a chair, and you bend over, putting your hand where your fingertips touch the bumpy bone of your ankle, the pain is about where my fingers stop and my palm begins, and forward.

You can tell I’m not up on my anatomy.

Anyway, Joel noticed that I was turning my feet out a little as I walked. Following that, I found that I don’t hurt so much – like “maybe I just need to quit walking and live right here” much – if I make a concerted effort to point my feet forward. Another librarian on FriendFeed seems to experience the same problem.

So I’m retraining myself to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt. It seems to only be an issue when I’m pushing myself to walk fast – not during casual walks, and I don’t jog/run with my feet turned the same way.

If you experience the same thing, maybe you just walk funny! Like me!

And, yeah, it should probably be “funnily” as an adverb, but I just don’t like that as much.

So, any med/nursing students want to tell me what the muscle on the outside sides of my lower legs is that I’m straining? Any favorite anatomy reference works you use? I could just look it up, but I find many of the anatomy websites I have access to to be hard to use and just plain annoying.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

This post is late because I was busy taking the bus to get here.*

I wrote several times in 2008 about the case of Juana Villegas, an immigrant in Nashville who was arrested as the result of a traffic stop and ultimately ended up shackled to a hospital bed during labor, separated from her newborn for two days without seeing him, and denied a breast pump or cream for lactating women. This past week, a federal judge ruled in her favor that the shackling during labor and after delivery violated her civil rights. I have a full post up at Our Bodies Our Blog on this topic.

I also have a full post up at the OBOS blog on the Skin Deep database, which provides info on the safety and ingredients of skin care and cosmetic products.

I spent the last few days at the IHA Health Literacy conference. I intend to post on this separately later, including a list of a lot of good resources I learned about, but Siobhan has a few things up at her place. One thing I need to think about is the level at which this blog is written, and whether it is useful and helpful to make some adjustments so posts are more readable for a wider audience, and whether there would be interest in that.

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, which I think I also found out about from Siobhan, has information and guidance for providers, patients, and organizations on a number of topics, including ageism, HIV and aging, housing, legal support, Medicare, homelessness, and more.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check (which has a new look) asks, “What does it mean to be pro-choice?“

NPR, on Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, aired several pieces on the local Magdalene/Thistle Farms, a residential program in Nashville, TN for women who have experienced violence, sex work, and addiction, and a bath and body products enterprise through which the women work and earn money. You can buy from them online at http://store.thistlefarms.org/.

A question at Good: Why isn’t birth control getting better?

Relatedly, I talked briefly with a representative of the California Family Health Council at the health literacy conference, and was told that they are trying to promote some longer term methods of birth control. This is among their other work, which includes the development of patient education materials on contraception, violence, cancer prevention, pregnancy, STIs, and other sexual and reproductive health topics. I always kind of get the willies when people talk about “promoting” long term contraception, because of the problematic history of how it has been used to assert control over the reproduction of women of color and poor women – regardless of what may be good methods, ethics and intent from whoever is talking about it. I’ll have to contact them and find out what the motivation for this is and how they are approaching it, because I didn’t have time to follow up at the event. In the meantime, anybody familiar with this group?

In the comments at Aunt B’s place, the topic of “gender parties” comes up. I have an appeal to saucy bakers to incorporate the message, “Now you know the sex, not the gender” into the design of these ill-conceived “gender party” cakes.

Here in Tennessee, Stacey Campfield has been pushing his “don’t say ‘gay’” bill, which – despite an intro that talks generally about home being the appropriate place for discussions of sexuality – provides specifically that “no public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation *other than heterosexuality*” – which is not at all the same as “teachers shouldn’t be discussing sexuality in schools at all.

I picked up a weekly paper in Orange County this week and noticed that Dan Savage mentioned the bill in his 5/4 column, pointing readers to wesaygay.com, a site ostensibly set up by a couple of teenagers opposing the bill and gathering petition signatures in opposition – it’s nice to see students being active in this way.

The bill passed the House committee and is scheduled for a full Senate vote on May 9, although it has been reported that the state Senate will not take it up this year.

The wonderful Rev. Chris Buice of Knoxville argues in a commentary on the bill that prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality in school hinders them in acting against bullying and prevents them from having many educational discussions related to current events and legislation.

Apparently this coming week is National Women’s Health Week.

From the FDA:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced a joint effort to remove products from the market that make unproven claims to treat, cure, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Among the products targeted in today’s action are Medavir, Herpaflor, Viruxo, C-Cure, and Never An Outbreak.

The Harper Collins controversy has escaped the boundaries of libraryland. tigtog at Hoyden notes it, and Andy’s change.org petition got sent out on a huge scale. Short version of the controversy – Harper Collins wants to make libraries buy new copies of ebooks after they’ve been read 26 times. You know, because libraries are rolling in money and typically discard books after 26 reads. *eyeroll* There’s a ton of writing on this in the library blogosphere, just google it with some combination of Harper Collins, libraries, 26, ebooks.

The Abortioneers are talking about the stigma of multiple abortion, and there is some really good discussion in the comments, including from those gently pushing back against the OP for certain attitudes expressed in the post.

The Utah AIDS Drug Assistance Program is closing to new applicants due to a funding shortfall; supporters of the program are encouraged to contact their state and federal legislators.

This week’s title: I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, car three in a five-car wreck. I’m fine, although I was a little rattled and had a seatbelt bruise for about a week. The car, which is older and was in a previous accident, is totaled. The spouse and I are planning to go without a car, at least for the next few months. Tips and strategies for doing so are welcome. Depending on my mood, the situation gets framed as “car free” or “carless.”

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Women’s Health

This post is late because I was busy taking the bus to get here.*

I wrote several times in 2008 about the case of Juana Villegas, an immigrant in Nashville who was arrested as the result of a traffic stop and ultimately ended up shackled to a hospital bed during labor, separated from her newborn for two days without seeing him, and denied a breast pump or cream for lactating women. This past week, a federal judge ruled in her favor that the shackling during labor and after delivery violated her civil rights. I have a full post up at Our Bodies Our Blog on this topic.

I also have a full post up at the OBOS blog on the Skin Deep database, which provides info on the safety and ingredients of skin care and cosmetic products.

I spent the last few days at the IHA Health Literacy conference. I intend to post on this separately later, including a list of a lot of good resources I learned about, but Siobhan has a few things up at her place. One thing I need to think about is the level at which this blog is written, and whether it is useful and helpful to make some adjustments so posts are more readable for a wider audience, and whether there would be interest in that.

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, which I think I also found out about from Siobhan, has information and guidance for providers, patients, and organizations on a number of topics, including ageism, HIV and aging, housing, legal support, Medicare, homelessness, and more.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check (which has a new look) asks, “What does it mean to be pro-choice?“

NPR, on Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, aired several pieces on the local Magdalene/Thistle Farms, a residential program in Nashville, TN for women who have experienced violence, sex work, and addiction, and a bath and body products enterprise through which the women work and earn money. You can buy from them online at http://store.thistlefarms.org/.

A question at Good: Why isn’t birth control getting better?

Relatedly, I talked briefly with a representative of the California Family Health Council at the health literacy conference, and was told that they are trying to promote some longer term methods of birth control. This is among their other work, which includes the development of patient education materials on contraception, violence, cancer prevention, pregnancy, STIs, and other sexual and reproductive health topics. I always kind of get the willies when people talk about “promoting” long term contraception, because of the problematic history of how it has been used to assert control over the reproduction of women of color and poor women – regardless of what may be good methods, ethics and intent from whoever is talking about it. I’ll have to contact them and find out what the motivation for this is and how they are approaching it, because I didn’t have time to follow up at the event. In the meantime, anybody familiar with this group?

In the comments at Aunt B’s place, the topic of “gender parties” comes up. I have an appeal to saucy bakers to incorporate the message, “Now you know the sex, not the gender” into the design of these ill-conceived “gender party” cakes.

Here in Tennessee, Stacey Campfield has been pushing his “don’t say ‘gay’” bill, which – despite an intro that talks generally about home being the appropriate place for discussions of sexuality – provides specifically that “no public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation *other than heterosexuality*” – which is not at all the same as “teachers shouldn’t be discussing sexuality in schools at all.

I picked up a weekly paper in Orange County this week and noticed that Dan Savage mentioned the bill in his 5/4 column, pointing readers to wesaygay.com, a site ostensibly set up by a couple of teenagers opposing the bill and gathering petition signatures in opposition – it’s nice to see students being active in this way.

The bill passed the House committee and is scheduled for a full Senate vote on May 9, although it has been reported that the state Senate will not take it up this year.

The wonderful Rev. Chris Buice of Knoxville argues in a commentary on the bill that prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality in school hinders them in acting against bullying and prevents them from having many educational discussions related to current events and legislation.

Apparently this coming week is National Women’s Health Week.

From the FDA:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced a joint effort to remove products from the market that make unproven claims to treat, cure, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Among the products targeted in today’s action are Medavir, Herpaflor, Viruxo, C-Cure, and Never An Outbreak.

The Harper Collins controversy has escaped the boundaries of libraryland. tigtog at Hoyden notes it, and Andy’s change.org petition got sent out on a huge scale. Short version of the controversy – Harper Collins wants to make libraries buy new copies of ebooks after they’ve been read 26 times. You know, because libraries are rolling in money and typically discard books after 26 reads. *eyeroll* There’s a ton of writing on this in the library blogosphere, just google it with some combination of Harper Collins, libraries, 26, ebooks.

The Abortioneers are talking about the stigma of multiple abortion, and there is some really good discussion in the comments, including from those gently pushing back against the OP for certain attitudes expressed in the post.

The Utah AIDS Drug Assistance Program is closing to new applicants due to a funding shortfall; supporters of the program are encouraged to contact their state and federal legislators.

This week’s title: I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, car three in a five-car wreck. I’m fine, although I was a little rattled and had a seatbelt bruise for about a week. The car, which is older and was in a previous accident, is totaled. The spouse and I are planning to go without a car, at least for the next few months. Tips and strategies for doing so are welcome. Depending on my mood, the situation gets framed as “car free” or “carless.”

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Women’s Health

Actually, the round-up is not a joke – but I have been cracking up at Stephen Colbert’s response (and the resulting tweets) to Republican John Kyl’s way, way off statement on the Senate floor that >90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion (it’s more like 3%), and his spokesperson’s response, when Kyl was called on the error, that it “was not intended to be a factual statement.” [more via Know Your Meme]

At Our Bodies Our Blog, some discussion of “opiate babies” as the new “crack babies,” with all of the problematic media coverage and decentering of women’s stories and experiences that implies.

Also, OBOS is looking for individuals who might want to be on the cover of the 40th anniversary edition of the book, which will use images of real readers/fans rather than generic pseudo-diverse stock imagery (yay!). Get details here.

The National Partnership for Women and Families has discussion of a study on medication abortion and whether ultrasound is needed. I haven’t read the paper it reviews yet, but thought I’d share.

The Maddow blog has some discussion of how efforts to restrict abortion rights really go beyond abortion, including anti-contraception perspectives that seek to limit women’s ability to prevent pregnancy.

Relatedly, social conservatives may be barking up the wrong tree if they think religious folks will support measures to reduce contraceptive/family planning services – per new results out from Guttmacher, which surprised nobody – “Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same among Catholic women (98%).” Although, almost 15% of women getting abortions apparently describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, so possibly the believe vs. do connection is not so strong after all.

A Maine bill that would have interfered with the ability of transgender people to choose the appropriate restroom for themselves and have legal resource if they were prevented from doing so was defeated (that’s a good thing, for safety for and decency to trans people).

Trans Respect vs. Transphobia tallies up an awful number of murders of trans people around the globe.

If I haven’t pointed to it before, Retraction Watch is a pretty cool resource on retractions of papers from medical journals and the ethics (or lack thereof) and bad scientific practices involved.

Kevin MD has a guest post on data overload and genomic medicine.

Honestly, I think the idea of a flash mob at Walgreens is an ineffective and unfortunate action in response to the Fox claim that we don’t need Planned Parenthood because you can get pap smears (and other services) at Walgreens. Nobody at Walgreens made that claim, and you don’t need a flash mob to document that – you need one person getting a statement from one Walgreens official. What a waste of effort.

Via Siobhan at BHIC, the CDC’s new health literacy site.

Random note: the most frequently found posts here have to do with “lost” tampons; as a librarian, I’m absolutely fascinated by all the ways people find to search the web for this topic.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Women’s Health

On Friday night, several colleagues, Joel and I went out for margaritas to say goodbye to a staff member who is leaving us for a new job.

He and I clearly ordered together, and were brought one combined check without being asked. That was okay, but I was a little grouchy that the waitstaff put the check directly in front of Joel (not in the middle, as was possible). That’s happens all the time and is a minor annoyance, but the woman continued in a way that made things worse.

When she came to pick it up, I directly handed the woman the little receipt holder thing, with my card with name on it inside, and made eye contact.

And when she came back, she tried to hand the whole thing back to Joel. Which required reaching over the table (not necessary to return it to me).

I understand that it was busy and she might not have been able to keep track of this “minor” detail. Taking the neutral approach would have eliminated the need to keep track, and eliminated the suggestion of any gendered assumptions about who pays. It also would have resulted in a larger tip.

Relatedly, Joel thinks she might have been trying to give it to him because she was expecting a larger tip from a man. That doesn’t exactly make it better – and she should have taken the clue after I handed it back to her.

The margaritas were good, though.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

This week I added one more lecture to the list of lectures I need to write up for posts here; this week it was Kevin Pho, better known as KevinMD. I’ll have more detail and commentary later, but I particularly appreciated his closing remark that patients *are* going online for health information, and physicians can either roll their eyes and resist or get on board – I’ve made the same argument in various posts here.

One more example of the Tennessee state legislature being up to utter hateful bullshit: Legislature moves quickly to nullify council’s newly adopted nondiscrimination ordinance. Nashville passed an ordinance basically meaning that businesses contracting with the metro government have to have nondiscrimination policies in place that include protections against workplace discrimination to sexual orientation and gender identity, which were not included in Nashville’s nondiscrimination policy until just recently. The state legislature is basically trying to override this Nashville rule. The “Christian conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee” put out a video in support of the state law (and against the nondiscrimination policy) – “In the video, a little girl goes into a women’s restroom at a public park followed by a sinister looking man.”

There is so much wrong with this – the overall intent to discriminate, hateful message about gender, gender essentialism, and implied transphobia (whenever you have the “bathroom” gambit). That’s a lot of wrong right there. There’s also the implication that all men are such monsters, if they’re allowed into more of the same spaces with women and children, they will automatically attack them, the framing of “women” as “unsupervised little girls” combined with the “oh!we must protect the ladies!” move, and the restroom in the video being clearly marked “women” – so apparently that didn’t stop the guy in their imaginary scenario. Grrrrrr.

Smithsonian.com explores the question, When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?, and notes changing social signifiers of masculinity and femininity. A good read for anyone who thinks it’s some kind of natural law for all little girls to like pink and all little boys to like blue.

The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals released an update on emergency contraception, with overview information on methods, effectiveness, mechanism of action (i.e., how it works), safety, barriers to use, and other topics.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an action plan to address health disparities. That is good. The plan is almost exclusively focused on racial/ethnic disparities – not gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, geography, or other categories linked in the evidence to poorer health outcomes and services. That is bad.

An interesting/useful way to phrase a framing in the abortion debate: “We have many areas in medicine in which patients and their families consider questions about the nature of life, but only with abortion do we legislate waiting periods, morality counseling and insurance bans.”

Microaggressions….I wish this site wasn’t necessary, but I think it is, to provide a window to all of the ways people are harmed because of who they are on a daily basis.

An xkcd installment for data/stats nerds. [discussion at explain xkcd]

Transmeditations talks about the transphobic problems with Maryland’s HB235 nondiscrimination bill.

The FDA announced that they’re trying to make it easier for the general public to keep up with information on recalls and safety alerts for foods, drugs, devices, and animal health and biologic products.

From the CDC, teen pregnancy trends from 1991 to 2009.

National Advocates for Pregnant Women covers a case in which a woman attempted suicide by rat poison; she survived, but her 33-week fetus did not. She is being held in jail without bail on murder charges. NAPW writes, “This prosecution flies in the face of all medical and public health recommendations regarding the most effective ways to address suicide attempts, drug dependency problems, and health problems pregnant women experience.” The woman’s attorney states, “Criminal justice is not the place where you take care of these things.”

Via Nerve, Sex Advice from Girls Women With Underarm Hair.

Random – the lineup for the National Storytelling Festival has been announced.

And from libraryland, Duke has a neat exhibit of anatomy flap books.

And, re: the heat, the A/C at home is not working. It was 91 degrees outside yesterday, and 85 in the house. Booooo!

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, Drugs, Government, Mental Health, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

Two new reports came out of the AHRQ Evidence-Based Practice Center at Vanderbilt this week, one a review of the effectiveness of various therapies for children with autism spectrum disorders, and the other a technical brief on maternal-fetal surgical procedures.

I’m always enthused to see new reports coming out of this EPC, because even if I haven’t personally worked on the topic, my colleagues have – and they’re great, smart folks. And, hey, the gracious acknowledgement in the autism report doesn’t hurt, either. [page iv]

The autism review looked at literature from the last 10 years in order to evaluate therapies in children ages 2-12 years with autism spectrum disorders. The therapies considered include behavioral, educational, drug, speech/language, dietary, alternative, and other interventions.

The body of literature available on this topic seems to be lacking – of the 159 studies considered for the review, the authors characterize the quality of only 13 as good, while 90 were considered poor quality; they note that “The needs for continuing improvements in methodologic rigor in the field and for larger multisite studies of existing interventions are substantial.” The overall conclusion was:

Medical interventions including risperidone and aripiprazole show benefit for reducing challenging behaviors in some children with ASDs, but side effects are significant. Some behavioral and educational interventions that vary widely in terms of scope, target, and intensity have demonstrated effects, but the lack of consistent data limits our understanding of whether these interventions are linked to specific clinically meaningful changes in functioning.

Because so many interventions were considered, I don’t want to try to detail them all here, but the full report is freely available as a PDF for those who are interested.

The maternal-fetal surgery report looked at the last 30 years of literature on fetal surgical procedures for congenital diaphragmatic hernia, cardiac malformations, myelomeningocele, obstructive uropathy, sacrococcygeal teratoma, twin-twin transfusion syndrome, and thoracic lesions. Not too surprisingly, a need for longer term and better studies was found – much of the literature in this area consists of case studies and cohorts, with randomized trials being rare. The authors explain:

While developing rapidly, research on fetal surgical procedures has not achieved the typical level of quality of studies and aggregate strength of the evidence used to reach definitive conclusions about care and policy. Overall momentum is toward more robust research and rigorous, more consistent documentation of outcomes over longer periods of time.

In other words, the existing literature is not ideal, but we think it’s going to get better.

One item of concern I’d like to highlight is the authors’ finding that “Near absence of maternal outcome assessment, including a significant lack of data on future maternal reproductive health, is especially concerning.”

It’s a fairly technical report, but is also freely available for those interested in more details on the state of the science in fetal surgery for each of the aforementioned conditions.

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Pregnancy, Web Resources

Assorted items of interest collected over the last week or so; as usual, the Sunday round-up is more socially than medically oriented, this week with several items on transgender women and related rights, issues, and prejudices as I’ve been trying to read more about these topics.

Scientific American has an excerpt from a new book, Demand Better! Revive Our Broken Health Care System. It’s a pretty clear explanation of how little doctors apply the best, most current evidence to medical treatment, and might be pretty shocking for folks who are not involved in evidence-based medicine issues. For example:

Even though clinical guidelines exist…physicians get it right about 55 percent of the time across all medical conditions. In other words, patients receive recommended care only about 55 percent of the time, on average…. How well physicians did for any particular condition varied substantially, ranging from about 79 percent of recommended care delivered for early-stage cataracts to about 11 percent of recommended care for alcohol dependence. Physicians prescribe the recommended medication about 69 percent of the time, follow appropriate lab-testing recommendations about 62 percent of the time and follow appropriate surgical guidelines 57 percent of the time. Physicians adhere to recommended care guidelines 23 percent of the time for hip fracture, 25 percent of the time for atrial fibrillation, 39 percent for community-acquired pneumonia, 41 percent for urinary-tract infection and 45 percent for diabetes mellitus.

Friends and family members who I encourage to question your physicians, to find out more, to not accept decisions based on simple authority? See above.

Renee at Womanist Musings calls out Bitch magazine for their focus on middle class white women in an article on “mommy bloggers” and their inclusion of women of color only as (literal) footnotes in the piece. She points out that in general women of color are not thought of when people thing of “mommy bloggers” and “mommies,” and that white women who blog on these topics are much more likely to receive recognition, book deals and other rewards – and it’s not because they’re just inherently better writers or more experienced moms.

Apparently some obstetricians in Tennessee are upset about a plan to have the state’s Medicaid program reimburse cesareans at the same rate as vaginal deliveries, in part to influence physicians to do fewer cesareans that are not medically indicated.

One physician interviewed tries to make a claim that physicians have to do more cesareans now because physicians are doing more cesareans…making a distinction between elective procedures and elective procedures done so physicians can avoid risks without working patients into that equation:

“It is very true that the rate of cesarean deliveries is increasing, but it is not increasing just because of convenience. It is increasing because of the repeat cesarean deliveries that occur…Many doctors now don’t want to face the liability of doing a vaginal birth after a cesarean section.”

Some repeat cesareans are obviously going to be medically indicated, but repeat after me: physician’s desire to avoid potential legal liability /= medical indication.

Becoming Johanna — A Trans Youth’s Story (VIDEO) – video focuses on an adolescent transgender Latina kid Johanna whose mother committed her to a mental hospital in order to prevent her from transitioning. A trailer is available; they’re part of a larger project.

Guest Post: Transmisogyny is Misogyny Against All Women at Transarchism. Includes discussion of what a woman’s body “should” have in order to be considered “woman” by other people:

What the hell does a woman’s body possess that makes it a woman’s body? What does it NEED to have to be female. Did you immediately think of breasts, ovaries, vaginas? Gross. Think about that for more than two minutes and you’ll see why it’s gross. Still don’t get it? Well then go down to the nearest breast cancer walk and tell every single woman with a double mastectomy she’s not a woman. When you’re done with that, go down to your local hospital, ask the nurse where the OR is, and wait outside until you can find a woman fresh out of her hysterectomy surgery, and tell her the news. Yeah, that sounds evil, doesn’t it? Well it’s basically what you’re doing when you’re policing trans women’s bodies. You’re telling all women what they have to have on/in their bodies to be a woman. Which, obviously, is totally gross.

Monica at TransGriot notes that while white feminists called out George Lopez for his body size-related remarks on Kirstie Alley, they were silent about transphobic comments directed at woman of color Wendy Williams. You don’t have to be a fan of any of those three to note the difference in handling.

The blogger at Lollygagging and Lassitude reacts to the reaction to the misogynistic, ableist, and ageist nonsense of Scott Adams of Dilbert by talking to feminists about picking targets – “But do not forget there are women who will die for reasons that have nothing to do with Scott Adams’ words” – including trans women. I have noted my dislike of “shouldn’t you be focused on more important things?” arguments in the past, and they are often cited as a derailing tactic when employed by external parties. In this case, though, it’s worth talking amongst ourselves about whether there are systemic privileges that focus what we talk about as feminists – nobody’s saying we shouldn’t talk about Scott Adams, I think the author is saying that we can talk about Scott Adams but we need to also remember not to use all of our fighting energy on people like him.

Audacia Ray explains that “You” probably couldn’t be arrested in New York City under provisions that allow condoms to be counted as evidence of sex work, that “Policies like this one exist solely to uphold the ability of police to harass people of color, poor people, and often trans women who are profiled as being sex workers or nabbed for ‘walking while trans.’”

Queerty has a bit on challenging the New York City requirement that trans men and women have genital surgery in order to change their birth certificate.

TransTalk points to the “Two Spirits” documentary to be aired by Independent Lens (PBS) in June. The website for the film is at http://twospirits.org/.

Rep. Henry Waxman demands answers from Ther-Rx about Makena – There’s a drug meant to help prevent preterm birth that was approved by the FDA as an “orphan drug” at which point the company that got the approval hiked the price from about $10-$20 a dose to $1500/dose. There is also commentary on the March of Dimes’s response, and a call to boycott Makena in favor cheaper compounded preparations.

AARP has a piece on inaccuracies in translated drug labels, citing a study (I haven’t read yet) that “Fifty percent of all prescription labels translated from English to Spanish are wrong or incomplete.”

The FDA may start regulating mobile medical software/apps.

Women’s eNews has a bit on maternal deaths in New York City.

Ron Paul introduced the Sanctity of Life Act for 2011 (HR 1096), which would define human life and personhood “from the moment of conception.” I hardly need to get into the fetus>woman, miscarriage, detectability of non-implanted fertilized eggs, and gross misogyny issues, right?

Some things from libraryland:
We need to work together to save the Statistical Abstract of the United States.

And the Nashville Public Library is compiling a digital history of our May flood.

For emergency responders, WISER has been updated – it’s “a system designed to assist first responders in hazardous material incidents” from the National Library of Medicine.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Drugs, Ethics, Government, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Women’s Health

This a topic that bears further discussion later, but I wanted to share this analogy I came up with after talking to a friend who experienced hostility when asking her doctor about information found online. I posted it to Facebook a while ago, but wanted to put it here where I will be able to find it again, too.

Warning patients away from “the internet” because some sources are bad is like telling patients to avoid all medications because some/most would be inappropriate or dangerous for that patient. Both miss opportunities to educate, collaborate, and improve care.

People – including patients! – use the internet. Period. It’s my opinion that doctors and nurses who immediately scoff at any mention of the internet – rather than appreciating the wide web of information, good, bad, helpful, worthless, dangerous, and in between – are more interested in being gatekeepers and authority figures than in helping patients understand their conditions and get good care.

I feel like there’s a teenagers/sex metaphor in here, too. Blanket prohibitions and authoritarian grandstanding do nothing but put a wall between people and what they need to know to be safe.

I would love to hear your experiences with health care providers and their attitudes toward information in the comments.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Libraryland, Miscellaneous

This a topic that bears further discussion later, but I wanted to share this analogy I came up with after talking to a friend who experienced hostility when asking her doctor about information found online. I posted it to Facebook a while ago, but wanted to put it here where I will be able to find it again, too.

Warning patients away from “the internet” because some sources are bad is like telling patients to avoid all medications because some/most would be inappropriate or dangerous for that patient. Both miss opportunities to educate, collaborate, and improve care.

People – including patients! – use the internet. Period. It’s my opinion that doctors and nurses who immediately scoff at any mention of the internet – rather than appreciating the wide web of information, good, bad, helpful, worthless, dangerous, and in between – are more interested in being gatekeepers and authority figures than in helping patients understand their conditions and get good care.

I feel like there’s a teenagers/sex metaphor in here, too. Blanket prohibitions and authoritarian grandstanding do nothing but put a wall between people and what they need to know to be safe.

I would love to hear your experiences with health care providers and their attitudes toward information in the comments.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Libraryland, Miscellaneous

This a topic that bears further discussion later, but I wanted to share this analogy I came up with after talking to a friend who experienced hostility when asking her doctor about information found online. I posted it to Facebook a while ago, but wanted to put it here where I will be able to find it again, too.

Warning patients away from “the internet” because some sources are bad is like telling patients to avoid all medications because some/most would be inappropriate or dangerous for that patient. Both miss opportunities to educate, collaborate, and improve care.

People – including patients! – use the internet. Period. It’s my opinion that doctors and nurses who immediately scoff at any mention of the internet – rather than appreciating the wide web of information, good, bad, helpful, worthless, dangerous, and in between – are more interested in being gatekeepers and authority figures than in helping patients understand their conditions and get good care.

I feel like there’s a teenagers/sex metaphor in here, too. Blanket prohibitions and authoritarian grandstanding do nothing but put a wall between people and what they need to know to be safe.

I would love to hear your experiences with health care providers and their attitudes toward information in the comments.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Libraryland, Miscellaneous

This a topic that bears further discussion later, but I wanted to share this analogy I came up with after talking to a friend who experienced hostility when asking her doctor about information found online. I posted it to Facebook a while ago, but wanted to put it here where I will be able to find it again, too.

Warning patients away from “the internet” because some sources are bad is like telling patients to avoid all medications because some/most would be inappropriate or dangerous for that patient. Both miss opportunities to educate, collaborate, and improve care.

People – including patients! – use the internet. Period. It’s my opinion that doctors and nurses who immediately scoff at any mention of the internet – rather than appreciating the wide web of information, good, bad, helpful, worthless, dangerous, and in between – are more interested in being gatekeepers and authority figures than in helping patients understand their conditions and get good care.

I feel like there’s a teenagers/sex metaphor in here, too. Blanket prohibitions and authoritarian grandstanding do nothing but put a wall between people and what they need to know to be safe.

I would love to hear your experiences with health care providers and their attitudes toward information in the comments.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Libraryland, Miscellaneous

A bit of what I’ve been reading this week, when I haven’t been outside getting a mild sunburn. In February.

Via fellow librarian Bobbie Newman, I learned of this piece, “The Hazards of Leading Culture Change” (click on the download link for the PDF). It’s kind of oriented toward businesses/organizations instead of movements/activism, but there were a few points I thought were relevant:

“When you are up to your backside in alligators,” goes the oft-quoted line, “it is hard to remember you were there to drain the swamp.” Organizations under pressure are fraught with alligators-those seemingly never ceasing crises that keep leaders up at night. But, if all the energy goes into simply fighting alligators, there will always be alligators. Culture change is about focusing on source, not symptom—cause, not contest.

the illusion of advancement is far worse than none at all

Three turtles sat on a log in the edge of the swamp. One decided to jump in. How many are now on the log? Nope, there are still three. Deciding and doing are not the same thing.

Culture change is hard work and requires enormous patience. Many leaders are by nature impatient people who think results can be produced with the snap of a finger and completed by the end of the week. Culture change takes a long time because it is complex and disruptive. Culture change involves unlearning old habits and acquiring new ways of thinking and behaving.

Lunapads has a couple of suggestions For the Bookworm On Her Period.

The New Black Woman asks, Why are white feminists silent on Limbaugh’s attacks on FLOTUS? Apparently Limbaugh criticized what Michelle Obama was eating on a trip (while completely misrepresenting her nutrition message, of course), and basically called her fat, saying she “does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”

Honestly, I don’t pay any attention to Limbaugh. His comments are clearly problematic because, at the very least, they misrepresent her message (hello, healthy eating does not mean you never ever eat anything unhealthy – it means awareness, better choices most of the time, and balance – not “roots and tree bark” as Limbaugh suggested), they put him in the position of policing what she eats and looks like, and they hold up an unreasonable (and not even real; Limbaugh, meet photoshop) standard and call it “healthy.” They basically say, “if she’s not an object of sexual desire in my estimation, her opinions aren’t valid.” And that, my friends, is utter bullshit.

Renee at Womanist Musings has more on this issue, and writes:

There is nothing about her physical body that needs to change, and the fact that she isn’t willing to starve herself, or engage in harmful eating practices to attain a figure that is unnatural for her, sends a positive message to young girls and more specifically young girls of colour, that they are fine they way they are.

I have to say, too, that I’ve also been troubled by the comments that are basically, “Limbaugh’s fat, so he can’t say anything.” No, if Michelle Obama were saying everybody should try to eat better and she was eating ribs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, Limbaugh could say something. No matter his size, no matter how much we might dislike him. But that is not the case. I don’t think the way to respond to body size policing is with more body size policing. Let me be 100% clear that this is not in any way to defend Limbaugh. I think his comments were crap. But I think that if people are going to respond to his crap comments, the way to do it is to criticize the substance, not to attack another body. It just sounds like some version of “so’s your mom” – and doesn’t get us anywhere.

Also on body image, Marianne at The Rotund has this to say:

“Real women have curves” was a marketing slogan thought up to sell people overpriced, ill-fitting pants. It does NOT promote body positivity – it only perpetuates body policing by turning the tables on people who don’t fit into yet another arbitrary ideal.

The job is to BUST THE FUCKING PARADIGM APART, not shift it a little bit toward the fat side. The job is to remind people, bodies are not public property and your opinion about an individual’s body is only an opinion, not a valid judgment of their worth as a human being. The JOB is to destroy systemic oppression of nonconforming, rebellious bodies no matter what those bodies look like.

Trans woman Tyra Trent was found murdered in Baltimore, reminding us once again of the violence trans women and men are too often subjected to. The Baltimore Sun covered the story, but included several quotes from Trent’s family members calling her “he,” and a cousin used the word “flaunt.” Tyra was also called a “sex worker” in the piece, while the same piece notes she had not been arrested since 2008. Argh. Other coverage, were it exists, is no better.

The Vanderbilt Medical School is hosting its annual LGBT health week this year from March 14-19. Overall it looks more LG than T, although Friday’s “Case Presentations in Adolescent Hormonal Therapy” might be relevant to trans health (no additional description is available at the moment – here’s the site).

I don’t think there’s a chance in hell this Georgia bill will hold up, but here it is. HB 1 would make “prenatal murder” illegal/a felony. It excludes “naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known medically as a ‘spontaneous abortion’ and popularly as a ‘miscarriage’ so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” Most miscarriages are unexplainable and so it would be impossible to prove that there was absolutely no human involvement in it. There is a lot of scientific debate about what may or may not increase a woman’s risk of miscarriage, so that’s a huge potential can of worms that could criminalize the smallest of everyday choices, not only abortion. Aside from which, there is necessarily human involvement, given that a fetus resides *inside* another human! It also defines a fetus as a person from “the moment of conception” (nevermind that at conception, it’s not a fetus. biology, whatever!). Amie and Jill at RHRC have more.

I haven’t watched them yet so I can’t say anything about them, but Dr. Nicholas Fogelson (Academic ob/gyn) has provided video of a recent talk he did on delayed cord clamping.

Next time I wonder why people call out online feminism for ageism, I’m going to remind myself that somebody who is 32 said she should pull back in order to make sure there was “a place for younger feminists to build their careers and platforms.” Okay, then. Kathy at Her Five Dollar Radio brings this up and asks “what you do “graduate” to when you feel you’ve aged out of the feminist blogosphere?” Over 30 as “old” is a huge problem; so’s the focus on “careers and platforms” instead of social change.

Things to learn more about: “The Native Women’s Association of Canada reports that 582 indigenous women and girls have disappeared or were murdered over the last five years.” For a U.S. update, the Seattle Weekly points to a new federal task force set up to address violence against native women. Here’s the press release from the Justice Department.

The New York Times has an editorial on recent abortion and family planning-focused legislation, The War on Women.

From libraryland, library folks are talking this week about Harper Collins’s completely absurd approach to ebooks.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups

A bit of what I’ve been reading this week, when I haven’t been outside getting a mild sunburn. In February.

Via fellow librarian Bobbie Newman, I learned of this piece, “The Hazards of Leading Culture Change” (click on the download link for the PDF). It’s kind of oriented toward businesses/organizations instead of movements/activism, but there were a few points I thought were relevant:

“When you are up to your backside in alligators,” goes the oft-quoted line, “it is hard to remember you were there to drain the swamp.” Organizations under pressure are fraught with alligators-those seemingly never ceasing crises that keep leaders up at night. But, if all the energy goes into simply fighting alligators, there will always be alligators. Culture change is about focusing on source, not symptom—cause, not contest.

the illusion of advancement is far worse than none at all

Three turtles sat on a log in the edge of the swamp. One decided to jump in. How many are now on the log? Nope, there are still three. Deciding and doing are not the same thing.

Culture change is hard work and requires enormous patience. Many leaders are by nature impatient people who think results can be produced with the snap of a finger and completed by the end of the week. Culture change takes a long time because it is complex and disruptive. Culture change involves unlearning old habits and acquiring new ways of thinking and behaving.

Lunapads has a couple of suggestions For the Bookworm On Her Period.

The New Black Woman asks, Why are white feminists silent on Limbaugh’s attacks on FLOTUS? Apparently Limbaugh criticized what Michelle Obama was eating on a trip (while completely misrepresenting her nutrition message, of course), and basically called her fat, saying she “does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”

Honestly, I don’t pay any attention to Limbaugh. His comments are clearly problematic because, at the very least, they misrepresent her message (hello, healthy eating does not mean you never ever eat anything unhealthy – it means awareness, better choices most of the time, and balance – not “roots and tree bark” as Limbaugh suggested), they put him in the position of policing what she eats and looks like, and they hold up an unreasonable (and not even real; Limbaugh, meet photoshop) standard and call it “healthy.” They basically say, “if she’s not an object of sexual desire in my estimation, her opinions aren’t valid.” And that, my friends, is utter bullshit.

Renee at Womanist Musings has more on this issue, and writes:

There is nothing about her physical body that needs to change, and the fact that she isn’t willing to starve herself, or engage in harmful eating practices to attain a figure that is unnatural for her, sends a positive message to young girls and more specifically young girls of colour, that they are fine they way they are.

I have to say, too, that I’ve also been troubled by the comments that are basically, “Limbaugh’s fat, so he can’t say anything.” No, if Michelle Obama were saying everybody should try to eat better and she was eating ribs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, Limbaugh could say something. No matter his size, no matter how much we might dislike him. But that is not the case. I don’t think the way to respond to body size policing is with more body size policing. Let me be 100% clear that this is not in any way to defend Limbaugh. I think his comments were crap. But I think that if people are going to respond to his crap comments, the way to do it is to criticize the substance, not to attack another body. It just sounds like some version of “so’s your mom” – and doesn’t get us anywhere.

Also on body image, Marianne at The Rotund has this to say:

“Real women have curves” was a marketing slogan thought up to sell people overpriced, ill-fitting pants. It does NOT promote body positivity – it only perpetuates body policing by turning the tables on people who don’t fit into yet another arbitrary ideal.

The job is to BUST THE FUCKING PARADIGM APART, not shift it a little bit toward the fat side. The job is to remind people, bodies are not public property and your opinion about an individual’s body is only an opinion, not a valid judgment of their worth as a human being. The JOB is to destroy systemic oppression of nonconforming, rebellious bodies no matter what those bodies look like.

Trans woman Tyra Trent was found murdered in Baltimore, reminding us once again of the violence trans women and men are too often subjected to. The Baltimore Sun covered the story, but included several quotes from Trent’s family members calling her “he,” and a cousin used the word “flaunt.” Tyra was also called a “sex worker” in the piece, while the same piece notes she had not been arrested since 2008. Argh. Other coverage, were it exists, is no better.

The Vanderbilt Medical School is hosting its annual LGBT health week this year from March 14-19. Overall it looks more LG than T, although Friday’s “Case Presentations in Adolescent Hormonal Therapy” might be relevant to trans health (no additional description is available at the moment – here’s the site).

I don’t think there’s a chance in hell this Georgia bill will hold up, but here it is. HB 1 would make “prenatal murder” illegal/a felony. It excludes “naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known medically as a ‘spontaneous abortion’ and popularly as a ‘miscarriage’ so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” Most miscarriages are unexplainable and so it would be impossible to prove that there was absolutely no human involvement in it. There is a lot of scientific debate about what may or may not increase a woman’s risk of miscarriage, so that’s a huge potential can of worms that could criminalize the smallest of everyday choices, not only abortion. Aside from which, there is necessarily human involvement, given that a fetus resides *inside* another human! It also defines a fetus as a person from “the moment of conception” (nevermind that at conception, it’s not a fetus. biology, whatever!). Amie and Jill at RHRC have more.

I haven’t watched them yet so I can’t say anything about them, but Dr. Nicholas Fogelson (Academic ob/gyn) has provided video of a recent talk he did on delayed cord clamping.

Next time I wonder why people call out online feminism for ageism, I’m going to remind myself that somebody who is 32 said she should pull back in order to make sure there was “a place for younger feminists to build their careers and platforms.” Okay, then. Kathy at Her Five Dollar Radio brings this up and asks “what you do “graduate” to when you feel you’ve aged out of the feminist blogosphere?” Over 30 as “old” is a huge problem; so’s the focus on “careers and platforms” instead of social change.

Things to learn more about: “The Native Women’s Association of Canada reports that 582 indigenous women and girls have disappeared or were murdered over the last five years.” For a U.S. update, the Seattle Weekly points to a new federal task force set up to address violence against native women. Here’s the press release from the Justice Department.

The New York Times has an editorial on recent abortion and family planning-focused legislation, The War on Women.

From libraryland, library folks are talking this week about Harper Collins’s completely absurd approach to ebooks.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups

Via Siobhan, a project intended to train volunteer interpreters to provide services to survivors of torture, trauma, and sexual abuse.

Lyon-Martin Health Services in San Francisco, which serves a lot of people of color, gay and lesbian and transgender people, is raising money to try to stay open.

Vivir Latino is going to be tweeting on Monday from a media breakfast hosted by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Latina Magazine, on issues and inequalities in reproductive health care affecting Latinas.

I’m not terribly familiar with abortion laws in Mexico, but the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health network reports on the case of a woman apparently sentenced to a 23-year jail term for murder/abortion for what she states was a miscarriage.

The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance has news on Medicare coverage of Avastin for ovarian cancer.

Pamela Merritt at RH Reality Check has a great commentary about racist anti-choice billboards.

Also at RHRC, Tiffany Campbell writes about a disturbing bill in South Dakota to require women seeking abortions to first visit a crisis pregnancy center that pretty explicitly promotes an anti-abortion agenda to hear about other options and to ensure the woman is not being coerced (which reputable abortion providers already do). I don’t know what would prevent CPCs from just stalling on that required appointment until a woman was no longer gestationally eligible for abortion. The bill is HB 1217 in South Dakota.

Reuters on the pay gap between male and female doctors, *even though* women *are* choosing high-paying specialties.

Trans Talk has info on an upcoming National Transgender Health Summit.

The FDA approved a drug to prevent preterm births. News here, FDA release here.

The Disability Compendium with 2010 stats has been released, covering employment, poverty, disparities, health care coverage, and other data.

At AlterNet, 11 Women Found Murdered in Albuquerque Desert — Why Was This Not Treated As a National Tragedy?

I’m not going to provide the whole background on the Penny Arcade/Dickwolves controversy. To catch up, the best timeline/resources is at The Pratfall of Penny Arcade – a Timeline. Be warned that the materials will involve discussions of rape and rape culture, the hostility of gamer culture to women and assault survivors, and a near-fatal overdose of “you don’t have a sufficient sense of humor” and “let me explain it to you as though you hadn’t considered this….” It has included some pretty vile comments directed at rape survivors. Melissa at Shakesville depressingly points out why the whole thing was always going to go down the way it did, once it started. Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

There was also a lot of controversy this week over Bitch magazine’s feminist YA booklist, including criticism of how Bitch responded to calls for books to be removed from the list and how the list was created in the first place. Someone in the comments points out that they could have referred folks to the Amelia Bloomer project list, an annual booklist of feminist works for young readers. The Amelia Bloomer folks have clear criteria you can evaluate, with information on the plot of each recommended title and its recommended age group. Sexual assault/rape is a factor in the discussions on the Bitch post, too; it also includes some interesting discussion of how people should act if they’re going to make booklists and refer to themselves as a “library.”

And so this seems like the natural place to link to this thing B has us mulling over, the conversations on feminist blogs, how often the leaders of those conversations fail, and how we should respond to that on an ongoing basis.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Cancer, Drugs, Global Issues, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, Miscellaneous

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently otherwise physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently otherwise physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.