tagged w/ womens issues
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By David Edwards
Sunday, February 5, 2012 11:08 EST
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday suggested that Susan G. Komen for the Cure shouldn’t provide grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings because abortions cause breast cancer, a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked.
The candidate told Fox News host Chris Wallace that he didn’t agree with the Komen Foundation reversing itself last week and making Planned Parenthood eligible for future grants.
“I’ve taken the position as a presidential candidate and someone in Congress that Planned Parenthood funds and does abortions,” Santorum explained. “They’re a private organization they stand up and support what ever they want.”
“I don’t believe that breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization where you’ve seen ties to cancer and abortion,” he added. “So, I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further cause of breast cancer, but that’s for a private organization like Susan B. Komen to make that decision.”
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the several small flawed studies that suggested a link between abortion and breast cancer have been disproven.
“Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted,” the institute’s website said. “These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.”
In 2002, the Bush administration temporarily altered NCI’s website to say that scientific evidence supported a possible link between abortion and breast cancer. After an outcry from the scientific community, NCI corrected its website with an accurate fact sheet.
A study released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in 2006 found that the Bush administration also used pregnancy resource centers — commonly known as “crisis pregnancy centers” — to falsely inform pregnant teens that the risk of breast cancer increased by 80 percent after an abortion.
“This tactic may be effective in frightening pregnant teenagers and women and discouraging abortion,” the study concluded (PDF). “But it denies the teenagers and women vital health information, prevents them from making an informed decision, and is not an accepted public health practice.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/05/santorum-suggests-abortion-causes-breast-cancer/
Watch this video from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast Feb. 5, 2012.
"What an Odd thing to say!!!"By David Edwards
Sunday, February 5, 2012 11:08 EST
Republican presidential... more
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KB723
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4 months ago
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Not one person in the US went to jail or paid any sort of penalty for the AIDS drug crime...Yaz is not the only drug that has multiple side effects ..most drugs are worse than the disease..the FDA has been bought and are packed with corporate insiders in the FDA...the doctors should know better than to give out Rx for this drug..drug companies falsify reports all the time...US is full of criminal corporations
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x628120
"I guess it's a Good Thing the GOP wants to do away with the FDA???"Not one person in the US went to jail or paid any sort of penalty for the AIDS drug... more
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KB723
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7 months ago
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FEMININE DEVALUATION AND SELF-HATRED
The feminist-Victorian antagonism to men was handed down from mother to daughter so that "to millions of women, hostility towards the opposite sex seems almost a natural law. Although many a modern women may pay lip service to the ideal of a passionate and productive marriage to a man, underneath she deeply resents her role, conceives of the male as fundamentally hostile to her, as an exploiter of her. She wishes in her deepest heart, and often without the slightest awareness of the fact, to supplant him, to exchange roles with him." (emphasis mine 56)
Robinson says that if feminism had brought women happiness, the game might have been worth it.
"But it hasn't been. The game has brought frigidity and restlessness and a soaring divorce rate, neurosis, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency all that results when a woman in any society deserts her true function." (56)
Dr. Robinson writes that once the emotional "log jam" is removed, a woman's natural instincts will flow and health will be restored. Essentially this involves "allowing herself to trust her husband in a very deep sense. It means that she finally realizes that she no longer has to fear or oppose his strength, but that she can rely on it to protect her, to give her the secure climate necessary for the full flowering of her femininity." (153)
For a profound vaginal orgasm, Robinson writes, "the excitement comes from the act of surrender. There is a tremendous surging physical ecstasy in the yielding itself, in the feeling of being the passive instrument of another person..." (158)
On the other hand, the woman who mistrusts her husband's love and, as a consequence, her own femininity has a "difficult, painful, frenetic" approach to life. She is at war with herself. In bed, she has to feel "in control all the time."
Robinson regards the clitoris as a masculine vestige. She implies that a woman may still be frigid even if she is sexually active and mechanically adroit. Feminine sexuality depends on "absolute trust" in a man, which allows a woman to fully receive and fully respond.
Dr. Robinson says there is nothing in life more important than love. She believes marriage is the key to human development. The power of love is felt in the world through this relationship.
"Love means, in its very deepest sense union; union between individuals...It is the most basic and profound urge we have and its power for good is illimitable... the lover partner becomes as important as oneself...This fact is why real love never leads to domination or to a struggle for power..." (129 GENDER DIFFERENCES
Robinson says men and women are different by nature. Men are designed for mastery of the external (physical) world, and women for mastery of the internal (spiritual) world and the home. These are not social stereotypes, as feminists argue.
"Women are designed for duties different from those of the marketplace, another kind of stress entirely," writes Robinson. They "tend to lose their essential womanliness if they stay [in the marketplace] by choice." (149)
According to Robinson, modern women have an identity crisis because they think they are no longer needed as women. Before the industrial revolution, the home was the centre of all life and a woman was its heart. She nursed and trained the children, prepared clothing and food, and helped with farm tasks.
The industrial revolution seemed to make women obsolete. Children were not needed and were even considered a liability. Everything could be bought in stores. The home was empty. Children went to school, husbands to work.
Woman's response was to turn against her own femininity. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a feminist manifesto Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) that proclaimed women were identical to men, and promoted maleness in women.
According to Robinson, "the feminist credo thoroughly discredited feminine needs and characteristics and substituted male goals for female goals."(53)
The other response to the industrial revolution was not feminist, but "Victorian." Robinson says Victorian women took "revenge" on men by denying women had any sexual feelings. They "were amazingly successful in convincing men in general and even the scientists of the day that frigidity was indeed a basic attribute of the female." (54)
Thus, feminists and Victorian women both laid the foundations for modern female neurosis.
"The depreciation of the goals of femininity, biological and psychological, became part and parcel of the education of millions of American girls. Homemaking, childbearing and rearing, cooking, the virtues of patience, lovingness, giving ness in marriage, have been systematically devalued. The life of male achievement has been substituted for the life of female achievement." (55)FEMININE DEVALUATION AND SELF-HATRED
The feminist-Victorian antagonism to men was... more
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FEMININE DEVALUATION AND SELF-HATRED
Robinson says that if feminism had brought women happiness, the game might have been worth it.
"But it hasn't been. The game has brought frigidity and restlessness and a soaring divorce rate, neurosis, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency all that results when a woman in any society deserts her true function." (56)
Dr. Robinson writes that once the emotional "log jam" is removed, a woman's natural instincts will flow and health will be restored. Essentially this involves "allowing herself to trust her husband in a very deep sense. It means that she finally realizes that she no longer has to fear or oppose his strength, but that she can rely on it to protect her, to give her the secure climate necessary for the full flowering of her femininity." (153)
For a profound vaginal orgasm, Robinson writes, "the excitement comes from the act of surrender. There is a tremendous surging physical ecstasy in the yielding itself, in the feeling of being the passive instrument of another person..." (158)
On the other hand, the woman who mistrusts her husband's love and, as a consequence, her own femininity has a "difficult, painful, frenetic" approach to life. She is at war with herself. In bed, she has to feel "in control all the time."
Robinson regards the clitoris as a masculine vestige. She implies that a woman may still be frigid even if she is sexually active and mechanically adroit. Feminine sexuality depends on "absolute trust" in a man, which allows a woman to fully receive and fully respond.
Dr. Robinson says there is nothing in life more important than love. She believes marriage is the key to human development. The power of love is felt in the world through this relationship.
"Love means, in its very deepest sense union; union between individuals...It is the most basic and profound urge we have and its power for good is illimitable... the lover partner becomes as important as oneself...This fact is why real love never leads to domination or to a struggle for power... http://robtshepherd.tripod.com/marie-robinson.htmlFEMININE DEVALUATION AND SELF-HATRED
Robinson says that if feminism had brought... more
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Bad and ugly:
Bill O'Reilly is, yup, still an asshole. And a moron:
Commenting on the Institute of Medicine's recommendation that contraception should be considered a preventative service and co-pays for contraception should be eliminated, Bill O'Reilly claimed: "Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex. They're not going to use birth control anyway."
A House panel voted to reinstitute the Global Gag rule. Because surely this will create jobs, right?
Amanda Marcotte and Jesse Taylor explain how states could ban abortion, even with Roe v. Wade on the books:
For decades, the debate over abortion rights has centered on a single court decision, Roe v. Wade, and the possibility of its overturn. Overturning Roe has become the holy grail of the antichoice movement, and many states have “trigger laws” on the books that would ban abortion immediately should the Supreme Court overturn Roe. Unfortunately for antichoicers, the justices resist overturning precedent; more importantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote on any abortion case before the court, upheld Roe on the basis of precedent in 1992. However, the recent surge in state legislation against abortion demonstrates that antichoice activists have figured out a new strategy: eliminating legal abortion without directly overturning Roe. [...]
Many state legislatures appear to be doing just that, writing legislation which Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, describes as “part of an ongoing effort around the country to choke off women’s access to abortion by any means necessary—either by forcing doctors out of practice, banning procedures outright or demeaning women.” The mildest version of this strategy, already passed into law by states such as Indiana and Nebraska, is to use bogus science to justify banning abortions after twenty weeks, on the fictional grounds that fetuses can feel pain at that gestational age. These bans borrow the logic of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the court suggested that scientific advances that keep premature babies alive at younger gestational ages could justify banning abortion at earlier in the pregnancy. Antichoice legislators have pounced on this logic, making bogus scientific claims that fetuses can feel pain to pull the line back well before viability.
The zealots' war in Kansas to make women's health illegal is costing the taxpayers an awful lot of money:
At a time when the state is slashing spending, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is hiring outside legal guns to defend state efforts to regulate abortion.
Schmidt has enlisted two law firms that will be paid up to $300 an hour to defend two lawsuits, one brought by two Kansas City area abortion providers and another filed by Planned Parenthood.
In case you missed it, Operation Rescue is patting itself on the back for pursuing a completely bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood. 'Cause nothing says "pro-life" like terrorizing and harassing women's health care providers.
The good news:
This is a step in the right direction:
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) have introduced a bill entitled the “Stop Deceptive Advertising in Women’s Services Act” (SDAWS), which would crack down on clinics (so-called crisis pregnancy centers) which falsely advertise themselves as a honest providers of information and services for women facing unintended and untenable pregnancies. Such clinics don't provide either abortion or contraceptive services; instead they dispense medically-inaccurate and deceptive information about both abortion and birth control and often use intense pressure to get women to carry to term regardless of an individual woman's circumstances or wishes. [...]
Introduction of the bill comes on the heels of a court decision this week granting an injunction halting implementation of a New York City law requiring CPCs to post signs disclosing the limited nature of their services, making sure women know for example what services and qualifications a particular center does and does not offer, and whether they have qualified medical staff on board.
The Institute of Medicine recommends that health insurers cover, with no co-pays, a range of preventative care for women, including birth control. Health and Human Services is likely to implement these recommendations. This is great news—and a no-brainer.
You know that idiotic new ad campaign encouraging men to buy milk to help fend off those crazy PMSing bitches at home? Apparently, the got milk folks got the message and have pulled down the website.
Girls kicked ass at Google's first science fair:
More than 10,000 students from 91 countries entered the science fair, which was Google’s first. The entries, submitted over the Web, were winnowed down to 60 semifinalists and then 15 finalists who presented their findings to judges at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters last week.
Ms. Bose’s research was named best in the age 17-18 category and best of show over all. Her prize includes $50,000 for future college studies, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands and a separate trip to visit the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.
Girls swept all three age categories in the competition, a contrast to generations past when women were largely excluded from the science world.
“Personally I think that’s amazing, because throughout my entire life, I’ve heard science is a field where men go into,” Ms. Bose said. “It just starts to show you that women are stepping up in science, and I’m excited that I was able to represent maybe just a little bit of that.”
http://bit.ly/pzaOFKBad and ugly:
Bill O'Reilly is, yup, still an asshole. And a moron:... more
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French advertising companies are often criticised for using sexual images to sell everything from designer spectacles to sweetcorn. Now, for the first time, a controversy has erupted in France over the use of sexually suggestive posters as a deterrent.
A campaign to discourage young people from smoking shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex. A cigarette takes the place of the man's sexual organ. The caption reads: "Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco."
The campaign, which was devised for a pressure group supporting the rights of non-smokers, has been attacked as "scandalous" and "potentially counter-productive" by feminist and pro-family campaigners.French advertising companies are often criticised for using sexual images to sell... more
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Yeti89
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1 year ago
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I am no bra specialist, but I did play one for a few weeks when we first moved down to Austin.
I had always wanted to work for VS. I have purchased all of my undies from there since I was about 16. I was following in the footsteps of some of my older cousins. Ten years later, I found folding those same undies was surprisingly meditative.
I often looked up at the 12-foot tall poster of the models in underwear and wondered what they would think if they knew my bra was held together with electric tape.
A store manager once asked us, “What’s the first thing people say to you when they find out you work for Victoria Secret?”
She was thinking we would say people are always impressed. But the truth was, women always asked about my discount (20%) and the guys just stared. The ones who know me really well ask me if I touch boobs all day (no). Once that’s out of the bag, people feel open to asking question after question.
The women always want to know how to measure others. I usually learn new skills quickly, but with no training I had no idea how to measure. I was shown maybe twice… and then thrown in the fitting rooms to measure women.
The measurements never came out right, so I would just guess. Then I’d get the bra for a woman and if I was right, bingo. No harm, no foul. But if I was wrong, I would soothe their fears, fetch another bra and keep troubleshooting until we found the right one.
This type of customer service led to women asking for me by name. Bra shopping is an awkward experience, so I tried to make it fun and let them know I was there for them.
What’s more awkward than bra shopping are the men who don’t need any help, and meticulously go through every panty drawer looking for the perfect one. Imagine the internal dialogue going through his head and he crotches low, examining each pair.
Or the guys who have to make it clear they are buying for their GIRL FRIEND, not themselves…
Or the guy who looked at me hard and said, “Yeah, she’s about your size.” He looked like his buddies at the construction site across the street had bet him to come inside the store and buy a lacy number for his ‘girl friend.’
Or the men who buzz around the store with their girl friends shyly following behind. “He’s buying something special for me,” the women would explain.
Or the woman who came in asking my opinion on big breasts. She has small ones, but she was about to get breast implants. What was I supposed to say? It didn’t matter because she plowed through my stumbling answer to keep talking about how hot she was going to look.
Or the woman who NEEDED my opinion of how she looked in a see-through lingerie piece two sizes too small for her. “Hot” was all I could think to say. “You think so?” said asked, twirling in different directions to get a better look at herself. When you are 6′, 120 pounds, wearing stilettos, fake tan, fake boobs, fake lips, gorgeous long flowing hair… it pretty much doesn’t matter what you wear.
Or the tiny woman obsessed with finding the XLs because she felt fat.
It felt good knowing I was helping other women. And I was a little sad to leave because it was interesting interacting with other women and helping them feel good about such a sensitive area. I’m not a hero; just a woman who understands.I am no bra specialist, but I did play one for a few weeks when we first moved down to... more
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Laura Hall is the first person ever banned from drinking alcohol anywhere in England or Wales...Laura Hall is the first person ever banned from drinking alcohol anywhere in England... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union last week faulted President Barack Obama for signing an executive order that bans federal funds from being used for abortion procedures and revives funding for expired abstinence-only sex-education programming.The American Civil Liberties Union last week faulted President Barack Obama for... more
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Women who have surgery to improve the looks of their genitalia are shockingly unaware of the the potential risks, according to this report.Women who have surgery to improve the looks of their genitalia are shockingly unaware... more
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I’m terrified of Nazi Breasts. They permeate television, film, magazines, and billboards. It feels like I’m dodging matrix bullets trying to avoid having Nazi Breasts shoved in my face at every turn. I don’t really hate the people that have Nazi Breasts. I hate the society that made them necessary. I recently lost a large amount of weight, about the weight of a full ballerina or Nicole Simpson pre-pregnancy. I had fantastic breasts when I was fat: huge, perky, full, voluptuous. But with the weight loss, I’ve lost some of the size and perkiness (which I’m told will come back as my body adapts and I tone up more). I’m not National Geographic now, but not where I’d like my body to be – that’s the perfectionist in me. My old bras no longer fit in band-size or cup-size. I must *gasp* go bra shopping.I’m terrified of Nazi Breasts. They permeate television, film, magazines, and... more
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From Twisty at Iblamethepatriarchy.com
Source: http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2009/05/06/spinster-aunt-perceives-flaw-in-pbs-documentary/
Last night’s Frontline documentary on human sex trafficking — “Sex Slaves,” originally broadcast in 2005 — clawed at every cranny of the obstreperal lobe. Definitely not heartwarming.
I’ll skip the basics, assuming that the advanced blamer is acquainted with the mechanics of human trafficking, because I wish to register a complaint. Well, several complaints. Actually, it’s one large complaint upon which a few dangling dingleberry complaints depend.
The large complaint is that the film is itself sexploitational. It is without question voyeuristic, and at times it borders on actual pornography. And why shouldn’t it? Porn has been normalized into a legitimate art form.
Naturally, people who watch PBS believe themselves to be above that sort of thing, but they still need a reason to watch a show about women’s oppression. They might come away with a few useless “facts,” but these must be delivered from within a framework of entertainment. And entertainment, in 2009, is sex and melodrama. Thus, the “Sex Slaves” teaser:
“An undercover journey deep into the world of sex trafficking, following one man determined to rescue his wife — kidnapped and sold into the global sex trade.”
A murder of spinster aunts could charter a yacht, order a vat of guac and a barrel of margs, and ruminate on the Lido Deck all day long, but we’d never come up with a more formulaical Chivalric plot than that. Are you kidding me? Evil villains, a damsel in distress whose virtue is at stake, and a gallant champion who literally rescues her? Oh, and the damsel is 4 months pregnant. Add sentimental fetus-anxiety bonus points.
A kind of grainy prurience attends nearly every sequence of footage. The B-roll street scenes are shot according to a familiar sexploitation formula: the self-consciously verité-esque camera singles out a pair of comely hips encased in sexy jeans, lingers lustily, and finally pans up to reveal the whole woman as a hottie. Meanwhile, the authoritative male voiceover — the disembodied Voice of God — masks this sleazy voyeurism with academic gravitas. When he describes Ukraine as Eastern Europe’s ground zero for “beautiful women,” and the visual is a taut young Ukrainian midriff, it is meant to be accepted as scientific fact. After all, although the qualitative differences between the two are few, this is a documentary, not an episode of “Law & Order: Mutilated Women Unit.” But the greasy ease with which the documentarist’s camera violates women who are just walking down the street minding their own beeswax is an invocation of the global accords governing fair use of women: all females are de facto sex objects, and hot girls — shots of women who aren’t Beauty2K-compliant didn’t make the final cut — are vulnerable sex slaves waiting to happen.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: DudeAmerica just can’t resist hot young prostituted Russians!
Sure, the producers are against human trafficking. Who isn’t? But can we please have a film about it that doesn’t parrot asinine patriarchal narratives about helpless damsels and male valor, that doesn’t itself exploit the very women whose exploitation it purports to abhor, that does more than just hint at some vague notion of women’s “poverty” as the reason for human trafficking? The rapists who abuse all the women in this film, where are they? Where’s the outrage over the notion that “the sex trade” is a “multi-billion dollar industry,” not because Ukrainian women are poor, but because the world is full of assholes who will pay to rape them? Just once I’d like to see somebody — anybody — point out that “the sex trade,” i.e. rape slavery, is not a consequence of women’s desperation and a few unscrupulous pimps. It is the consequence of a social order based on the fetishization of dominance.From Twisty at Iblamethepatriarchy.com
Source:... more
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S3th
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3 years ago
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She's on the March cover of Vogue in a sleeveless silk sheath. Then there was the purple sleeveless Narciso Rodriguez she wore to the president's joint session of Congress on Tuesday. And she's on the cover of the latest People magazine in a lacy pink number, also without sleeves.
Those toned arms are becoming a trademark. And a source of inspiration for some women.
Rylan Duggan, a personal trainer who runs Go Sleeveless, a blog that instructs women how to tone up flabby arms and "eliminate bat wings," said that in addition to asking how to get "Madonna arms" or "Kelly Ripa arms," clients are now asking about getting "Obama arms."
"The Obama effect has been that women of all ages have been inspired to take responsibility for their health and their body," said Duggan. "As the first lady of the United States, at 44 years old, and with two young children, Mrs. Obama has shown the world that you are never too busy to take care of yourself and look good doing it too," he said.
Exercise advocates are also fans. "She's a great role model," said Jessica Matthews, a continuing education coordinator for the American Council on Exercise. "Women shy away from strength training, because they're afraid of big muscles. She shows nice toned arms and that it's not going to lead to this myth of a bodybuilder type."She's on the March cover of Vogue in a sleeveless silk sheath. Then there was the... more
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gooma2
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3 years ago
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