Feminism

Maternity services are bracing themselves for a “spike” in unplanned pregnancies which could place further strain on clinics amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, experts claim.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) is warning that the prospect of an extended lockdown combined with a lack of access to contraceptives is likely to fuel an increase in accidental pregnancies.

Bit of a surprise that the strong, educated and independent women of today haven’t worked out what causes babies yet.

Who was it trying to set him up?

It prompted immediate recriminations and demands for resignations within the SNP, which Salmond’s allies and opposition parties said now faced profound questions over its handling of the case.

The nine women involved in the charges were all current or former Scottish government officials, or SNP politicians.

And I guess that idea that we must always believe the woman needs to be put to one side at least occasionally.

The dilemma I have a nine-month-old daughter and have begun to return to work. Before I gave birth I was sure this wouldn’t be a difficult decision; I’ve never been maternal and my career has always been a priority, so a pay decrease and inevitably getting overlooked for projects and progression wasn’t on the cards. However, watching her grow has been the most rewarding and enjoyable period of my life and I feel guilty. She loves nursery, but the thought of her interacting with her care workers more than me makes me very upset. I feel as if I’d be throwing these early years away. My partner would happily drop some of his hours, but his work won’t allow it, whereas I am offered much more flexibility. It seems like a privilege to even have this option, but I feel my whole identity has changed and everything I thought was important is being challenged. Every mum I’ve spoken to says I’m more likely to regret the time I didn’t spend with her, and I think they’re right. It feels as if I’m taking a gamble whichever decision I make.

If only we’d ever had a society which recognised this.

How difficult is it going to be for female actors to navigate sexuality in a post-#MeToo landscape?

Reese Witherspoon has spoken to Vanity Fair magazine about how actresses shouldn’t be made to feel they can’t express their sexuality because they’ve been vocal about #MeToo. Witherspoon (who previously spoke about being assaulted by a director when she was 16), said: “[A woman’s] sexuality shouldn’t be diminished because she’s having a conversation about consent. You should be able to be sexual, to display your sexuality, because consent is consent, no matter what.”

And if you really, really, want that role why shouldn’t you be allowed – no, not pressured, but allowed – to offer what you’re willing to give to get it?

Or are we talking about some other meaning of consent and sexuality here?

Billie Eilish has given the music industry everything it could possibly want. An authentic new voice that appeals to teenagers and their parents. A debut album that has sold more than 2m copies in the US alone. A decisive stylistic evolution from the preceding decade’s dominant pop mode. A clean sweep of the four key categories at the Grammys. A copper-bottomed streaming success model. A James Bond theme that rejuvenates a tired franchise and extends her commercial and creative clout.

Until she offers up her prime commodity as a young female pop star, it will never be enough.

While 18-year-old Eilish is a beguilingly physical performer, she has never shown her body in service of her art. She prefers loose clothing because she feels comfortable in it, and has denounced the use of her image to shame female pop stars who dress differently. Not that it’s stopped anyone. Denying spectators the traditional metric by which female stars are judged – sexiness, slimness; the body as weathervane that reveals how tormented or contented they must be when they lurch between the extremes of those states – has created an obsession with her body and what it must stand for.

It sure ain’t capitalists to blame, nor the men. They’re off counting the money and giggling quietly to themselves as they do so.

It must, therefore, be the women being mean – but then that’s always true, isn’t it? The viciousness with which young women regard each other is famed throughout history. It’s vastly worse than anything men do to the distaff side.

Endometriosis is a painful, often debilitating, condition in which tissue similar to that found lining the womb is found elsewhere in the body, such as the bowel or ovaries. When it breaks down and bleeds, as it would in the womb, it can cause inflammation and pain. It is believed that up to 10% of women live with the condition, with some left infertile as a result.

Now researchers have studied decades of data to reveal the condition is more common among women who were tall and lean when young, a finding that may help identify those at greater risk.

“Body size during these ages is an indicator for later risk,” said Dr Jennifer Baker, a co-author of the research from the University of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg hospital in Denmark. “It really tells us that the roots of this disease lie earlier in life than people have previously thought,” she said.

Writing in the Annals of Human Biology the researchers reported that they analysed data from more than 170,000 women born in Denmark between 1930 and 1996. Danish school-based health programmes meant all children had their height and weight measured between the ages of seven and 13 years.

The team also looked at hospital data, collected since 1977, to track until mid-2017 records of endometriosis or adenomyosis – a condition in which tissues akin to the lining of the womb are found in its muscular walls – in those aged 15 or older.

Overall 2,149 women were diagnosed with endometriosis, and 1,410 with adenomyosis.

A 10% rate, eh? And yet we’ve got this database of women who have been tested. And find 2,100, or about a 1% rate. One and a bit at least.

We also know what the cure is – hysterectomy and ovectomy (ovariectomy?) and early menopause. Fairly radical cure of course but it is there. Sure, loss of fertility is a high price to pay. As is the cure for prostate cancer just to point out that this isn’t a sexist issue.

If gender is simply a social construct then why do people bitch like hell when it’s society doing the social construction?

It’s telling that Jacques, a former Guardian writer, had to approach a US publication to get the article published.

The NYT pays very well, Why wouldn’t you want to be published there?

Elizabeth Warren was the ideal candidate, but there was only one problem… she was a woman

The problem was not, as with Hillary, “a” woman. The problem was “that” woman.

Mitt Romney was a highly successful, very well qualified, man. The problem was “that” man, not “a” man. If you prefer politics as your qualification the same applies to Al Gore.

And, as has been said recently (Samizdata I think?), I’d still offer odds on the first female POTUS being a Republican.

“I believe we still have a problem in the United States with female authority,” Morris said. “I think in the same way that some people resented the obvious competence of Hillary Clinton because they ascribed to her a schoolteacher or maternal tone, people have applied these kind of terms to Elizabeth Warren. They do not ascribe them to men.

There is the issue that in both cases it’s not been “no woman” but “not this woman”.

But it’s true, terms in English can be gendered. Scold, besom, harridan, they’re all gendered terms. An interesting start might be to try running a woman who wasn’t all three of these.

Polygamy is about to be decriminalised in Utah. Is it good news for women?

Marriage, mating, pairing – not quite le mot juste here but still – off is a marketplace. If some number of women are taken off the market by allying themselves multiply with the one man then that increases the supply of available men for the smaller number of available women.

Thus all women not in polygamous marriages get to trade up.

The people who suffer in a polygamous society are the non-polygamous men, the people who benefit the non-polygamous women.

Possibly the polygamous men suffer too – multiple mothers in law?

More than a quarter of British men think sexual jokes and stories are acceptable in the workplace, an academic study has found.

A survey of more than 20,000 people in 27 countries was carried out to mark International Women’s Day.

It found that 28% of men thought that stories of a sexual nature were acceptable in work settings, compared with 16% of women.

Well done lads, keeping a sense of humour under the oppressions of modern capitalism?

What the KKK is trying to do is to rebrand itself, and part of that is to attempt to redefine what racism means. In their definition, racism basically comes down to lynchings and burning crosses: if you’re not actively doing them, you can’t be a racist organisation.

That, of course, is bullshit. And it’s why we don’t let white racists define what racism is or isn’t, because their definition excludes pretty much all forms of racism. Hate groups don’t get to define what is and isn’t hatred.

OK, hate groups don’t get to define. What is a hate group?

A hate group is:

“…an organisation that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

Super, the commies hate the bourgeoisie and the capitalists – elimination as a class is a pretty good sign of that – therefore commies don’t get to define stuff. There most certainly are groups out there – say, the PAC in S Africa – which hate white peeps so therefore they don’t get to define. And modern feminism – men are simply so hateful – has problems with being allowed to define anything then.

Gonna make those marches a bit lonely but we should hold them to their own definitions, right?

Menopause, defined as a full year with no period, hits women on average around the age of 51. But the years before that cessation – called perimenopause – can be more emotionally and physically fraught than we anticipate. We change a lot during these years. And, as we may remember from puberty, transitions can be awkward. Our bodies and our moods frequently betray us, but one of the worst parts of perimenopause and menopause is that no one talks about them.

True, the conversations are short but the information does get passed from generation to generation.

“She’ll go nuts for a few years Lad. But it’ll pass”.

“Oh, OK. So, that’s 15 two, 15 four, one for his knob……”

The sex/power divide does something else as well: it helps to protect women’s experience of their own sexuality from the fact of endemic exploitation. It says that, even in a world where men use sex as a weapon against women,

When we talk about sex – the full consent kind – we do generally note that it’s men who propose, women who dispose.

That is, it’s the women who hold the power over men where sex is concerned. Odd that feminists – or perhaps this feminist – don’t seem to know that. Possibly even that the ignorance induced confusion is what determines the political views?

The same question applies whenever sex is turned into a transaction: what does “yes” even mean? When a man pays a woman to have sex with him, or a woman is paid to have sex on camera for the purposes of pornography, what does “yes” even mean if saying “no” would stop her from affording rent or eating a meal?

It means the woman has looked at the choices reality is offering and made a decision. In exactly the same manner that a gong diver makes the decision about whether to go to work that day or not. Actually, in the same manner that anyone decides whether to go to work or not. Ms. Ditum is being aided in paying her rent by writing for The Observer. We do though have to assume that Ms. Ditum did so voluntarily.

A woman who “sacrificed” her career as a solicitor so she could look after her children has won compensation on top of an equal share of the family’s wealth after her divorce.

The ruling could have implications for other divorce cases in which one partner has stepped back from their career for the good of the family, a lawyer said.

The Cambridge graduate was embroiled in a fight over cash with her millionaire husband, who is also a solicitor, after the breakdown of their marriage.

A judge has decided the pair, who were married for about a decade and have two children, should split assets of nearly £10 million equally but that the woman should get another £400,000 in compensation for curtailing her legal career.

How does that one work? She’s also not had to go to work for 10 years……

There’s also a certain amount of cakeism here. She made a decision about how to live her life, didn’t work out well, how sad. But another bite of the cake when it doesn’t?

Today’s one is against Glasgow Women’s Library, which declined to host a meeting of an anti-trans hate group as the library is proudly inclusive of all women. The predictable result was a flood of abusive messages that’s still ongoing. This isn’t the first time the library has been under sustained social media attack for simply being trans-inclusive; previous ones ran on for months.

Can’t let the people who pay for something use it of course now, can we? The point of taxation being to pluck all for the benefit of the elite that do GoodThink.

Agreeing in advance about who does what to whom does not reflect the reality of sex.

So how can anyone know that consent has been gained?

Forget consent forms. The burden of proof should never fall on rape victims

Doesn’t the first point rather negate that second?

Rose McGowan has described Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction as a watershed moment and claimed that he “could be one of the biggest serial rapists in history”.

Y’know, given that he wasn’t found guilty of rape rape in the first place.

In “Life in Synchro,” this hyperfeminist sport empowers women to work together

Synchro is women skating in skimpy uniforms. To music.

I guess it’s hyperfeminist in the same sense the Rockettes are.

OK, fair enough, they’re both difficult, require coordination, have skimpy outfits and are done to music. Just as long as we know what the definition of feminist is these days of course.