Bearing Babies, Bearing Risk – or, How the Stupid Stupak Amendment Hurts Women’s Health

A couple of months ago, I wasted a half-hour of my life listening in on a town hall conference call with my congresscritter, Charlie Wilson. Amid all of his reassurances to reactionary constituents that he wouldn’t sign off on death panels, he kept repeating: “I am a Blue Dog Democrat. I am pro-life.” This weekend, he [...]

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The Risks of Outsourcing Immunity to the Private Sector

On the phone, during a short break from comforting her daughter who was suffering from swine flu, my sister tells me: “I am so angry at our government!” Now, this is not a woman who routinely turns to the government for help. She votes Republican, largely on fiscal grounds. But my sis has been trying [...]

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Swine Flu Hits Home

No, I’m not sick, nor are my kids – and my husband got the swine flu shot this morning, as one of those “lucky” people who are likely more vulnerable than average. But as I was stirring the dinner pots this evening, my sister called to tell me that her daughter (my six-year-old niece) has [...]

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How to Prove You’re a Lousy Parent

So you’ve probably all heard about the balloon boy, even if you watch as little TV news as I do (zero, that is). Yesterday, Falcon Heene, a six-year-old boy in Fort Collins, Colorado, went missing. His family reported that he had apparently floated away with an enormous helium balloon that they kept tethered next to [...]

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Rapid Response at My University – Half a Day Later

In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, campuses all over the country beefed up their security. Mine did too. One of our new safeguards was an email alert system to notify members of the university community when an act of violence has occurred or is in progress. It’s basically a great idea. As usual, [...]

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Who’s the Biggest Boob?

The charity Rethink Breast Cancer, which just produced a moronic video to “raise awareness” of breast cancer? Or LA Times reporter Dan Neil, who thinks this ad, entitled “Save the Boobs,” is a swell idea? (I think something may be rising and swelling, but I highly doubt it’s awareness.)

Jeff Fecke of [...]

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Separate Spheres … for Recess?

I’m grateful that officials at my kids’ elementary school have far more sense than this:
Boys and girls at Sedalia Elementary returned to school Monday with some unexpected changes: They had to play in separate areas during recess and eat at different tables during lunch.
The decision to divide the two groups did not stem from an [...]

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Ohio to Nursing Mothers: Get Those Breasts on a Schedule!

If you’re a nursing mother in Ohio and your employer doesn’t allow you time to pump, you might as well quit before you’re fired. Here’s how the Columbus Dispatch reports a decision by the state’s highest court that, at least on its face, would appear to make breastfeeding incompatible with full-time employment if you’ve got [...]

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Hawt Girl-on-Girl Action … ‘Til the Boys Look Away

Last fall, the topic of girls kissing girls for boys’ jollies came up in one of my Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies sections. I’m still perplexed at how we landed there on the very first day of class, but hey, there we were. So I asked the group, which was about 90% freshmen, how [...]

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Spectacular Ageism at the New York Times

Today’s most-emailed story at the New York Times tells the story of a medical student, Kristen Murphy, who voluntarily spent two weeks as a wheelchair-using “patient” in a nursing home in preparation for specializing in geriatrics. It’s an otherwise engrossing read, but I had to read the following passage a half dozen times to make [...]

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To All the Folks Equating Obama and Hitler

Stop scrambling German history.
It was Bismarck, not Hitler, who introduced universal health care in Germany. Bismarck established public, non-profit insurance agencies funded by worker and employer contributions. He didn’t do it because he was a bleeding-heart liberal; his intent was to co-opt an issue that drew support to socialism.
Please get your mustaches straight.

Photo from the [...]

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Why My “Good” Insurance Needs the Public Option

My family and I have “good” insurance. Oh, sure, I’ve spent dozens of hours fighting our insurer to reimburse us for life-saving cancer drugs that my husband had the temerity to need while he was in Germany, where those drugs cost somewhere between a tenth and half the price that they would have been in [...]

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Naw, ‘Wingers Aren’t Fascists

Over the past few days, a new commenter has been visiting my blog. He insists that it’s overblown to discuss any fascist tendencies among the American right wing and keeps talking about the stupidity of “you people,” though I’m still not sure who we might be. (I’m not going to do him the favor of [...]

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Sarah Palin: Mother to 5, Anti-Mother to Millions

Blue Gal has a quotation from Keith Olbermann that sums up my initial reaction to Sarah Palin casting Trig as a potential murder victim of Obamacare:
And incidentally, Madam, you have forfeited your right to be taken seriously the next time you claim offense at somebody mentioning your children. You have just exploited your youngest child, [...]

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When the Pill Is As Dangerous as Heroin

Do y’all remember the transitive property from math? Here’s a refresher (though I’m sure you don’t need it): If a=b and b=c, then a=c.
From the Savana Redding case (the one on whether schools may strip-search their students), we know that some school officials consider ibuprofen in the same class as heroin.
A couple of months ago, [...]

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Gates and the Invisible Knapsack

What does the Henry Louis Gates case have in common with a knapsack?
If you’ve ever taken an intro to women’s and gender studies course, you probably know the answer. Like most instructors who teach it, I routinely assign Peggy McIntosh’s article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” (It’s short, easy to read, and available here. [...]

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Caturday Meets Wingnuttia, Jonah Goldberg Edition

At Alternet, Tara Geneva reports that Jonah Goldberg says we can stop planning for global warming and start readying ourselves for a far more likely catastrophe: a big old asteroid striking the earth! (By the way, wasn’t Reagan’s Star Wars program supposed to cover that threat? Yikes, we’re back to the future!)
Here’s Goldberg’s scenario:
The year [...]

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Attacks on Sotomayor – A Case Study in Intersectionality

The other day, I found myself thinking that Sonia Sotomayor had been attacked more along racial than gender lines. I’m not sure where I got that idea, because watching this compilation corrected my impression. Her critics seem to have been admirably evenhanded in their bigotry.

(via Sociological Images and Racialicious)
I’d forgotten about [...]

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Squirrely about Chocolate

I haven’t seen our bunnies since I returned from Germany. They’re probably pouting about the cage we put over my chard. So I got all excited when I heard a rustling sound while my husband and I were sitting on the front porch.
It wasn’t a bunny. It was a squirrel, having a big fight with [...]

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The TSA Is Global

Not literally – but the spirit of the TSA is flourishing abroad, just as paranoid as here but without the friendly smile you sometimes get from TSA employees.
Last month I wrote about how airport security in Brussels searched inside the waistband of my older son’s pants. I realize they’ve got to be thorough, but my [...]

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