[Click to embiggen. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.]
The women of the 113th House of Representatives: There are 80 female members this session, 61 of whom are Democrats.
[Via.]
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.]
The women of the 113th House of Representatives: There are 80 female members this session, 61 of whom are Democrats.
[Via.]
Meet the New Congress; Same as the Old Congress
It is now the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen, and lots of things have changed. Humans are immortal, we all drive flying cars to our jobs at the robot factory, and President Lucy Liu has secured lasting world peace. But one thing has not changed: The Republicans are a total garbage nightmare.
Adam Peck at Think Progress: With Millions Still Waiting for Sandy Relief, Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal.
The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn't too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.It's getting harder and harder to remember a time when Republicans were something more than contemptible roadblocks to functional government.
House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.
...At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.
Question of the Day
What's the last bit of personal teaspooning that you did? Which could mean something you did for yourself (e.g. giving yourself permission to not indulge internalized negative messaging) or something you did for/with someone else (e.g. introducing a fat-hater to HAES or helping a friend in financial need).
An Observation
Hey, do y'all remember how Mitt Romney thinks people are not entitled to food? HA HA WOW. Sometimes I still think about that and I just feel super happy that he was not elected president.
That is not an argument that President Obama is perfect because whoooooooooops he is not. It is just an observation that Mitt Romney is SO TERRIBLE.
We really dodged a d-bag on that one.
Today in Fat, Part 2
[Part 1 is here. Content Note: Fat bias; medical malfeasance; diet talk.]
The wonderful Marilyn Wann is over at CNN, also talking about the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which came to the astonishing, ahem, conclusion that, as Wann puts it, "being fat might not be a death sentence."
Otherwise known as: What living fat people have been saying for years.
Anyway.
Wann also indirectly refutes Will Saletan's bullshit contention about the great medical care we fatties get:
How many of the deaths blamed on weight are actually caused by medical equipment -- everything from blood pressure cuffs to surgical instruments -- that fails to accommodate fat people when we need it most? ... How many of the deaths blamed on fat actually happen when people are diagnosed as fat instead of being diagnosed and treated for an illness?Which is the inevitable result of treating as scientific fact that all human bodies are built the same, and the only reason anyone could possibly be fat is because they are lazy, stupid, and worthless.
Then there are the fat people who did everything their doctors recommended to lose weight ... and died from dangerous diet drugs, from starvation diets, from mutilating weight-loss surgeries. I also hear from many people who live with the devastating physical and psychological consequences of such weight-loss attempts.
...People are telling their stories of weight bias in medical care on websites like First, Do No Harm, This Is Thin Privilege and Obesity Surgery Gone Wrong. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has been speaking out on behalf of fat people's civil rights since its founding in 1969.
Health professionals of good conscience are joining this effort in increasing numbers. They've developed an approach called Health At Every Size that is proving to be better for people's health than weight-loss attempts. The Health At Every Size professional organization, Association of Size Diversity and Health, this week launched the project Resolved, a response to New Year's weight-loss resolutions. It invites people to share stories about weight discrimination in health care and opinions about what needs to change.
Weight bias has been documented among doctors, nurses, fitness instructors and other professionals on whom a fat person might need to rely for help. Last year, researchers who themselves are part of an anti-"obesity" institution (Yale's Rudd Institute) surveyed medical professionals who specialize in caring for fat people and found that they had high levels of weight bias, viewing us as "lazy, stupid, and worthless."
I know it's a radical notion, but if everyone who purported to be concerned about fat people's health started by respectfully treating us as individuals, by recognizing our humanity, that would be awesome.
No one has ever gotten healthier, in any way, by being constantly treated like garbage.
Boehner Reelected as Speaker
With nine defections by GOP House members who voted for someone else, and a few other non-voters who were probably too busy pooping their pants in petulant protest, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has been reelected to his position. What a great day for us all, I'm sure.
Y'all, we should all chip in and buy him a congratulatory present. I'm thinking a soul. Or a capacity for empathy. Or a functional sense of decency. I dunno. Maybe a vestment.
Get on Your Feet!
I am jonesing for Parks and Recreation, but it doesn't return with new episodes until January 17. This morning, I watched this (non-embeddable) clip—again—and laughed and laughed—again—until I was crying—again.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Emily Buchanan for Time magazine: Pro-Life and Feminism Aren't Mutually Exclusive.
Ha ha okay player.
It is my estimation that anything which fundamentally robs any woman of her bodily agency is incompatible with feminism, of which legal and accessible abortion is but one prominent example. So I disagree with Buchanan's premise right from the start.
But her facts, ahem, are also wrong.
From its early beginnings, feminism was a young women's movement. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Charlotte Lozier and so many others began their suffragist work in their 20s. These women — the original feminists — understood that the rights of women cannot be built on the broken backs of unborn children. Anthony called abortion "child murder." Paul, author of the original 1923 Equal Rights Amendment, said that "abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."Paul did say that—although the specific context of the quote was her belief that abortion singularly left women with the consequences of "casual sex," allowing men to more easily use women. At a time when contraception was not easily accessible (and what contraception was available was in some places illegal), men had even less cultural responsibility in pregnancy prevention than they do now, abortion was illegal and frequently unsafe, women could be forcibly sterilized, and reproductive coercion was a concept that did not even exist, no man would be held accountable for forcing a woman to get an abortion and no woman had anything resembling meaningful reproductive choice.
It's possible, in today's world, Paul would find denying abortion to be the ultimate exploitation of women, because the balance of choice has fundamentally changed.
So the pro-life movement hasn't changed the meaning of feminism, as has been suggested. It was the neo-feminists of the 1960s and '70s who asked women to prize abortion as the pathway to equality.No. To prize choice. That is not a semantic difference.
[H/T to Shaker Jennifer.]
Number of the Day
20: The number of women being sworn into the US Senate today. [Note: Video may start playing automatically at link.]
Today the Senate will make history, swearing in a record-breaking 20 female senators -- four Republicans and 16 Democrats -- in office.It's terrible that meaningful representation still seems so elusive that to imagine it is like conjuring a sci-fi senate. I picture Senator Willow Smith arriving at the Space Capitol with her 49 female colleagues on their Halliburton brand jetpacks.
"I can't tell you the joy that I feel in my heart to look at these 20 gifted and talented women from two different parties, different zip codes to fill this room," Sen. Barbara Mikulksi, D-Md., said while surrounded by the group of women senators. "In all of American history only 16 women had served. Now there are 20 of us."
... And while the number of women in the Senate today makes history, many of the women agreed that they want to keep fighting to boost those numbers.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said that women are still "underrepresented" in the Senate.
"I think that until we get to 50, we still have to fight because it's still a problem," Boxer said. "I think this class as you look around, Republicans and Democrats. ... I think that because of this new class and the caliber of the people coming and the quality of the people coming, I think that hopefully in my lifetime -- and I really do hope and pray this is the case -- we will see 50 percent."
Or HOVERBOARDS. Pro-choice.
Today in Rape Culture
[Content Note: Sexual violence; pedophilia; normalization of rape; rape apologia.]
In September, Gawker featured a piece by Cord Jefferson about pedophilia as a "sexual orientation," which heavily sympathized with pedophiles and failed utterly to incorporate any perspective from or empathy with victims of childhood sexual abuse. At the time, I simply linked to this great piece by Grace, which explored the ethics of writing about sexual abuse.
I am going to point you there again, because the Guardian has now published a similar piece of apologia by Jon Henley.
Henley, like Jefferson, seeks to humanize pedophiles by normalizing their behavior. He is fascinated by the "experts" and their disagreement about how pedophilia is or should be defined and "even how much harm it causes."
There is, astonishingly, not even a full academic consensus on whether consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm.That is not astonishing to anyone who has spent any time engaged with anti-rape advocacy. There is an endless parade of rape apologists, some of them with a trail of official academic letters behind their names, who will assert that sexual violence of all sorts does not cause harm to its survivors.
Their helpful footman, Henley eagerly reports that "not all experts are sure" that children cannot meaningfully consent to sexual interactions.
A Dutch study published in 1987 found that a sample of boys in paedophilic relationships felt positively about them. And a major if still controversial 1998-2000 meta-study suggests – as J Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, Chicago, says – that such relationships, entered into voluntarily, are "nearly uncorrelated with undesirable outcomes".That a sample of survivors of sexual abuse, of any age, "[feels] positively about" their abuse is not an argument for the harmlessness of abuse, but a predictable example of how many sexual abuse survivors employ an identifiable and common coping strategy of viewing their abuse as a loving act. This is especially common among child victims.
Who, for the record, are not capable of "entering voluntarily" into sexual interactions with adults, which are, for the record, not "pedophilic relationships," but instances of sexual violence.
Henley is, however, keen to tell us that pedophiles are not violent.
[N]ot all paedophiles are child molesters, and vice versa: by no means every paedophile acts on his impulses, and many people who sexually abuse children are not exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to them. In fact, "true" paedophiles are estimated by some experts to account for only 20% of sexual abusers. Nor are paedophiles necessarily violent: no firm links have so far been established between paedophilia and aggressive or psychotic symptoms.Only in the frame of a deeply cynical rape apologist who feigns wide-eyed astonishment at all these shiny new facts he's been carefully collating to make a case for pedophiles would the casual assertion be made there is no evidence of "aggression" in people who sexually abuse children, or that sexual abuse is itself not a form of violence.
After all, Henley observes, "Social perceptions do change. Child brides were once the norm; in the late 16th century the age of consent in England was 10." Henley seems unaware, or unconcerned, that trading girl children to adult men is still the norm, or very common, in some places (Unicef estimates there are still 60 million "child brides" around the world at any given time), and, further, that we protect children by inviting, promoting, and advocating empathy with children, not with their abusers.
But the agenda here is, of course, urging us to empathize with the poor beleaguered pedophile, because it is our hostility toward sexual predators that is the real problem:
We can help keep children safe, Goode argues, "by allowing paedophiles to be ordinary members of society, with moral standards like everyone else", and by "respecting and valuing those paedophiles who choose self-restraint". Only then will men tempted to abuse children "be able to be honest about their feelings, and perhaps find people around them who could support them and challenge their behaviour before children get harmed".I am firmly on the page that talking about sexual predators as if they are monsters, that dehumanizing them, is profoundly unhelpful. That said, I am also firmly on the page that ignoring the reality most pedophiles are dangerous predators who insinuate themselves into children's lives and carefully groom victims based on their circumstances, centering in on children whose need and neglect ensure their abusers' freedom, is also unhelpful, to put it politely.
As I have previously observed: "It is eminently possible to talk about rapists as complex human beings without talking about them (inaccurately) as 'good people who just happened to do a bad thing.' Rape is not an act that happens accidentally. Rapists, all rapists, are predators who are hostile to consent and spend plenty of time feeling out, as an explicit or unconscious strategy, how far they can push boundaries (sexual and otherwise) without consequence before they commit rape."
Pedophiles are not an exception. They are expert predators. And predators harm, despite Henley's argument that may not be so:
Bailey said that while he also found the notion "disturbing", he was forced to recognise that "persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of paedophilic relationships does not yet exist".Yes it does. But access to that persuasive evidence requires listening to and empathizing with victims.
[H/T to Jordan.]
RIP Beate Sirota Gordon
Beate Sirota Gordon, who at age 22 inserted groundbreaking guarantees of gender equity into Japan's constitution, has passed away:
At an age of only 22, Gordon was among those assigned to work on drafting a post-war constitution for Japan. She took it upon herself to include clauses of gender equality and women’s rights that weren’t even established in the U.S. at the time. She remained in Japan in 1946, participating in the negotiations between the top government officials of both the countries over the final wording of the constitution. Gordon moved to New York afterwards where she married and had two children, but she remained an active in promoting Japanese cultural exchanges and continued to praise the country’s renouncement of war, as defined in the constitution’s Article 9.
The New York Times has more details:
One, Article 14, said in part, “All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”The other, Article 24, gave women protections in areas including “choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters.”
I note that, even today, such protections for women are not specified in the U.S. Constitution, although they may be protected by other laws or judicial interpretations.
In 2005, her groundbreaking work was the subject of a documentary film directed by Tomoko Fujiwara and sponsored by prominent Japanese women, called The Gift From Beate. The film brought Gordon's story to the public as Japanese feminists sought to defend Article 24 from assaults by conservative politicians.
[Note: If there are less flattering things to be said about Sirota Gordon, they have been excluded because I am unaware of them, not as the result of any deliberate intent to whitewash her life. Please feel welcome to comment on the entirety of her work and life in this thread.]
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, gun violence, murder, war]
Cheers used to be on Thursday nights:
Bank of America has been fined $7,500 by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development after employees wrongfully denied a mortgage loan to a lesbian couple because they weren't legally married.
Sandy Hook students resumed classes today for first time since the school shooting last month.
U.S. drone strike kills at least six in Pakistan, including militant commander.
Speaking of: Drone strike comedy!
The Campaign for Southern Equality will travel to seven Southern states to request marriage licenses in order to call for full equality under federal law.
Check out this wicked awesome Tumblr.
Why I Hate Sports: Part 6,987.
The Year In Murder: A detailed look at Baltimore City murders.
Today in Fat
[Content Note: Fat hatred; medical malfeasance.]
The Good News: Our old friend Paul Campos is in the New York Times talking about "Our Absurd Fear of Fat." And, as per usual, he is saying very smart things.
In other words, there is no reason to believe that the trivial variations in mortality risk observed across an enormous weight range actually have anything to do with weight or that intentional weight gain or loss would affect that risk in a predictable way.I encourage you to read the whole thing. It's very good.
How did we get into this absurd situation? That is a long and complex story. Over the past century, Americans have become increasingly obsessed with the supposed desirability of thinness, as thinness has become both a marker for upper-class status and a reflection of beauty ideals that bring a kind of privilege.
In addition, baselessly categorizing at least 130 million Americans — and hundreds of millions in the rest of the world — as people in need of "treatment" for their "condition" serves the economic interests of, among others, the multibillion-dollar weight-loss industry and large pharmaceutical companies, which have invested a great deal of money in winning the good will of those who will determine the regulatory fate of the next generation of diet drugs.
Anyone familiar with history will not be surprised to learn that "facts" have been enlisted before to confirm the legitimacy of a cultural obsession and to advance the economic interests of those who profit from that obsession.
Don't expect those who have made their careers on fomenting panic to understand that our current definition of "normal weight" makes absolutely no sense.
The Bad News: Will Saletan, professional concern troll, is in Slate, saying, ahem, slightly less good things. He's essentially looking at the same evidence that Campos is, but, unlike Campos, he hasn't spent years immersed in this subject, so he ends up saying some truly absurd (and unhelpful) things. Like:
10. Overweight gets you more medical attention and intervention. Doctors' belief that fat signals a health risk makes them more likely to scrutinize heavier patients for disease symptoms or risk factors. Lots of evidence suggests doctors treat these patients more aggressively, thereby reducing mortality. In this way, the medical profession's assumption that weight correlates with illness makes that correlation less visible in mortality data.LOL no. There are a lot of fat people who die, or nearly die, because doctors can't see past their fat to find illness unrelated to fat. Shaker Azzy, as you may recall, was continually diagnosed as "fat" and "depressed," even though: "I actually had cancer. Of the thyroid. Which had metastasized to my lymphatic system. OOPS!!"
What minimal reduction in mortality there may (or may not) be by doctors associating fat with illness is almost certainly outpaced by the increase in mortality because of misdiagnoses as a result of doctors associating fat with (specific) illness, treating weight loss as a cure-all for fatties, and the routine discouragement of careseeking by fat people because of endemic fat-shaming by health practitioners.
Which is to say nothing of the increasing emphasis on weight loss to access health insurance, and the still ever-present insistence of many surgeons that fat patients need to lose weight before they earn surgery, even to fix disabilities that limit movement. (Good luck losing weight for your hip replacement surgery when your hip doesn't work!)
Fat hatred kills people all the time.
The suggestion that we get "more medical attention and intervention" is indecent, in the face of the reality we experience. Sure, we get more doctors telling us we're dangerously fat (attention) and that we need to lose weight (intervention), but when you're at the doctor for difficulty breathing and it turns out to be a blood clot in your lung that kills you, the attention and intervention for your fat isn't meaningful medical attention. It's harmful.
And so is publicly eliding the harm done to fat people, to assert something about our lives that is flatly not true.
[H/Ts to Shakers Jacksonandlola and mal black for the Campos piece, and to Shaker Nicole for the Saletan piece.]
Neat!
Milky Way Contains At Least 100 Billion Planets, New Analysis Finds:
The Milky Way contains at least 100 billion planets, or enough to have one for each of its stars, and many of them are likely to be capable of supporting conditions favorable to life, according to a new estimate from scientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (Caltech).Carl Franzen's got more at TPM.
That specific figure of 100 billion planets has been suggested by earlier, separate studies, but the new analysis corroborates the earlier numbers and may even add to them, as it was conducted on a single star system — Kepler 32 — which contains five planets and is located some 1,000 light years away from Earth in between the patch of sky found between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, where NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope is pointed.
In fact, the new star census estimate, which came after scientists verified three of the five planets around the star Kepler 32, is strictly conservative, according to the Caltech astronomers who developed it after studying the Kepler 32 system.
"There's room for these numbers to really grow," said Jonathan Swift, a Caltech astronomer who is the lead author on a paper on the new findings, in a phone interview with TPM. "They're not going to shrink. Our calculation is new in the sense that we are making the calculation of planets in compact systems around the most populous type of stars in the galaxy."
Question of the Day
Did you make any New Year's resolutions? If so, what were they and how are you doing so far?
I never make New Year's resolutions, because when I decide to do something, I just do it, and if I'm putting something off, no arbitrary day is going to end my stubborn procrastination.
Last year, I said: "If there's anything I hope to accomplish this year, though, it's to get my chronic laundry disorganization under control. Spoiler Alert: This will never happen!"
HA HA GUESS WHAT?! It didn't!
Thus, the goal remains the same. You?
