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At any given time several distinct crawls are running, some for months, and some every day or longer.
View the web archive through the Wayback Machine.
On this Thanksgiving and somber anniversary, I’d like to say that I am thankful — thankful to have had you as a part of my life, and to have been a part of yours. Two years later, I still miss you.
Eddie Kendricks – You Are the Melody of My Life
I’ll never forget how sweet the song you sang And I’ll always recall all the joy you gave me For you are the melody of my life
How warm were the days when you were here with me Too long you’ve been gone, but memories never leave For you are the melody of my life
You’re a part of me, the song I sing deep in the heart of me And you’re everything, you’re all that I’ll ever want or need For you are the melody of my life
For you are the melody, you’re a part of me You’re everything, you’re song I sing when I’m glad The sound of your name takes away all my sadness For you are the melody of my life
So there’s a fascinating new study out about how women perceive their weight, with the results being that a significant proportion of women who were deemed “overweight” by the BMI did not view themselves as such. Cue the body-shaming, junk reporting, and photographs of fat1 people with their heads cut off.
Nearly one in four women who is overweight perceives her weight as normal, according to a new study.
The study also shows 16% of the normal-weight women studied had weight misperceptions, considering themselves overweight, says researcher Mahbubur Rahman, PhD, MBBS, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and a senior fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. [...]
“The fact that people misperceive their body weight was already known,” says Rahman, so the new research echoes some previous information. But in his study, he also wanted to see if the body weight misperceptions influenced health behavior.
Rahman obtained height and weight information from the medical charts of 2,224 women, ages 18 to 25.
The women answered questions about healthy weight-related practices in the 30 days prior — including eating less, eating differently, or exercising. They also answered questions about unhealthy behaviors, such as the use of diet pills, use of diuretics, vomiting, laxative use for weight control, cigarette smoking, or skipping meals.
For the study, Rahman used the standard definitions for normal, overweight, and obese, with BMIs below 25 termed normal, those 25-29 overweight, and 30 and higher obese.
The women also answered questions about education, ethnicity, marital status, household income, employment, and Internet use.
The women were divided into four categories:
Overweight women who thought they were normal or underweight
Overweight women who knew they were overweight
Normal-weight women who thought they were overweight
Normal-weight women who thought they were normal or underweight
Interestingly, they didn’t have a category for “Women who knew their bodies were fine just the way they were and thought we should go fuck ourselves.”
For those unfamiliar with the term “fat” as anything other than an insult, I want to be clear that I use the term here both to refer to myself and other people as an entirely neutral descriptor with no value judgment attached. I say that I’m fat in the same way that I might also say that my hair is brunette — or in the same way I might say that person is tall, or that shirt is blue, or that dog is large. ↩
Last week, a post I wrote about the death of Amy Lynn Gillespie generated a lot of attention. Ms. Gillespie, who was being detained Allegheny County Jail for violating the conditions of her work release by becoming pregnant, died after being denied timely medical care for her treatable condition. As I argued in the post, it is appalling and unacceptable both that she was in detention for this reason to begin with and that she was denied her right to health care access.
Since then, I’ve received word of responsive action by New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice. They will be conducting a march tomorrow, Tuesday November 23 at 12pm, the flier for which appears above. In a press release I received via email, New Voices says:
The recently filed lawsuit against the Allegheny County Jail must draw our attention to the grave Reproductive Justice issues and fatal Human Rights violations affecting incarcerated women. The allegations about the conditions in Allegheny County Jail raised in this lawsuit are of serious concern to New Voices Pittsburgh and our allies. The death of Amy Lynn Gillespie was seemingly preventable with basic medical care and reproductive healthcare. The death of any pregnant woman from preventable causes is reproductive injustice and is especially egregious in the custody of the Allegheny County Jail. We challenge the coercive and intrusive practice of conditioning work release on not getting pregnant. We must expose the criminalization of women and pregnancy as a threat to Human Rights that risks women’s health and women’s lives.
The FOCUS on Women Campaign is a community organizing initiative led by New Voices Pittsburgh to address the Reproductive Justice and Human Rights issues of incarcerated women in the Allegheny County Jail. Our campaign began in January 2010 and our strategy for public policy change led to the passage of Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1074, the “Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act” in July through the efforts of our allied organizations. Our campaign produced the Policymaker Leadership Institute with the Urban Initiative for Reproductive Health to “Protect the Rights of Incarcerated Women to Reproductive Health Care” in October. Our work to educate, activate and mobilize our community continues with the following:
March/Public Action: Tuesday, November 23, 12noon-1pm, Convene: Fifth and Grant Street, Allegheny County Courthouse; March to Allegheny County Jail
Public Forum: Tuesday, November 30, 2010, 6-8pm, Location: TBD
If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, please consider attending and/or getting involved with other organizational efforts by New Voices. For updated information on the upcoming public forum on November 30, stay tuned to the New Voices Facebook page.
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a day set aside to remember all of the lives that have been lost to anti-trans violence, most specifically in the past 365 days, but also further into the past.
I never know quite what to say on days like today, days set aside to mark the extraordinary impact that oppression has on people’s lives, the toll it takes, and the violence it inflicts. I especially don’t know what to say as someone on the “outside” — as a cis woman, transphobia and transphobic violence affect me both as someone who has friends who are trans* and as someone who cares about social justice. But I’m not the one living with the threat and fear of violence every single day. This day is not mine, and I cannot speak for trans* people, nor do I want to when they are perfectly capable for speaking for themselves.
But as a cis person, I feel the need to say something. Because if it wasn’t for cis people, if it wasn’t for our hatred and violence, there wouldn’t need to be a Transgender Day of Remembrance at all.
The alleged attack, during school hours last Thursday, was reportedly filmed by three teenage boys on their phones.
The Commission for Gender Equality said the school was more worried about upsetting the boys during exams than the rights of the alleged victim. [...]
The alleged attack happened in a school east of Johannesburg on Thursday. The school girl was allegedly drugged with a spiked drink before the rape.
The failure of the school authorities to respond to the allegations was widely reported in the media and has sparked outrage.
“The three boys were not arrested as they alleged that they did not want to traumatise the school during the exams,” CGE spokesman Javu Baloyi said in a statement.
He said the clip of the rape was shown to teachers, who reportedly found it “hilarious”.
The two alleged perpetrators were only arrested after the public outrage began.
Trigger Warning for prison abuse, specifically denial of medical treatment, and reproductive rights violations.
At the beginning of this year, a 27-year-old woman named Amy Lynn Gillespie died (h/t @DCdebbie). She was 18 weeks pregnant, and died in a hospital after being transferred there by Allegheny County Jail, which was currently detaining her. The problem is that they apparently transferred her much too late, and Gillespie’s mother is now suing the county, among others:
Amy Lynn Gillespie, of Cuddy and, later, Knoxville, was jailed in December for violating the terms of her work release by becoming pregnant. Initially found to be in good health, according to the complaint filed by Downtown attorney Robert N. Peirce, she was complaining by the end of that month of difficulty breathing and discharge from her lungs.
Treated for viral influenza and denied diagnostic tests, according to the complaint, she worsened and then was transferred on Jan. 1 to UPMC Mercy. There she was found to have bacterial pneumonia, too far advanced to be successfully treated with antibiotics. She and the fetus, then 18 weeks along, died Jan. 13.
Mr. Peirce filed the civil rights lawsuit for the deceased’s mother, Luann Gillespie Shultz.
But let us back up just a minute — she was jailed because she was pregnant? Yes, indeed she was.
Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence against children and adolescents, as well as victim-blaming and rape apologism.
A new study out of B.C., Canada (pdf) on whether age of sexual consent laws are actually doing anything to prevent the sexual abuse of young people by adults has acted as an opportunity to engage in a whole host of rape denialism and victim-blaming behavior. The language in framing contained in the report itself certainly didn’t help, and the media apparently decided to run with it:
Children in B.C. who had sex when they were 12 or under are more likely than older teenagers to have had sex first with an adult, according to a shocking new study by Vancouver researchers to be published today in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.
University of B.C. and Simon Fraser University researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent Health Survey, which polled 29,000 students in Grades 7 to 12 over three months in 2008, the year the federal government increased the age of consent to 16 from 14.
The purpose of the study was to test the government’s reasons for changing the law after 100 years, but what the authors discovered was that the law apparently does not protect the younger kids who are most at risk of sexual abuse. [...]
They discovered a shocking 39 per cent of students who first had sex when they were 12 or under said it was with someone age 20 or older. Of those who first had sex when they were 14 or 15, only two to three per cent said it was with someone 20 or older. [...]
The numbers were similar for boys (38 per cent) and girls (39 per cent) 12 and under who said their first sex was with an adult.
“Our evidence really doesn’t support that it is the 14-and 15-year-olds who are at greatest risk of having sex with adults. It is the younger teens, and that has always been illegal,” said senior author Elizabeth Saewyc, professor of nursing and adolescent medicine at UBC.
Okay, first of all, I just have to ask: are we allergic to the word rape? Or have we been aiding and abetting rape by covering it up as “sex” for so damn long now that we don’t even know how to properly use the word anymore? Because I’m really fucking tired of pointing out the obvious over and over and over again. A child under the age of 12 — 12!!! — cannot “have sex” with an adult. But as these numbers pretty clearly show, an adult sure can rape hir.
Honestly, it seems the problem is that we don’t even understand what rape is. How can we use the word appropriately if we don’t even know what it means? And it terrifies me to know that we can’t even begin to solve this problem until we do understand what rape means and what consent looks like, within the context of how very, very far away from that point we are. Because here are the “solutions” currently being offered:
In the study report, the authors say additional strategies are needed to protect the kids who are the most vulnerable. They suggest improving education in schools to include information about healthy relationships.
That would include “talking to teens and children about dating and relationships and why older adults might want to date younger teens and why that it is not appropriate,” Miller said. “Also, what does consent mean, and how can we navigate that as teenagers in a relationship?”
Children aged 9, 10, 11, and 12 — and yes, certainly a whole lot younger, too — are being raped by adults. And the “solution” is reportedly to teach those children better about what is an is not appropriate.
A King County judge has decided against declaring a mistrial in a child-rape case in which an alleged victim climbed to the roof of the courthouse and threatened suicide last week just before she was set to testify.
On Thursday, the 21-year-old woman, who was set to confront the defendant in the courtroom, made her way onto the roof of the King County Courthouse and spent about three hours threatening to jump before she was led to safety.
The woman was reportedly distraught about taking the witness stand against Salvador Aleman Cruz, who was accused of raping her when she was a child. Cruz, who is acting as his own attorney, was expected to question the alleged victim Thursday while she was on the stand, said Dennis L. McGuire, an attorney assigned to help Cruz with his defense.
On Monday morning, the judge hearing the case, Douglass North, dismissed the two criminal charges against Cruz involving the 21-year-old woman at the request of the prosecution. The charges were two counts of first-degree child molestation.
…
Cruz, 40, is still charged with seven felony counts, including first- and third-degree child rape, first-degree child molestation and communication with a minor for immoral purposes.
This was the solution to the woman’s inability to testify under the inhumane conditions presented to her. Just drop the charges. Pretend the assault that almost drove her to suicide was just never alleged to have happened at all.
The most distressing part of this is that it may have genuinely been the best, most compassionate remedy available. It’s possible that the prosecutors acted out of concern that the victim in question could act as a liability to the case. But it’s also entirely possible that the victim expressed a continued inability to testify, and requested that the charges be dropped as the only course of action that would ensure she did not have to.
In the last post, I stated that allowing an accused rapist to directly question hir own alleged victims is an act of witness intimidation. Though it is not the victim’s fault and likely not the prosecution’s either, the decision to drop charges has proven the system to condone and outright support precisely that. The decision to dismiss the charges has effectively told rapists that they now have a legal avenue through which they can intimidate victims into dropping their cases. They can legally bully and harass their victims in an open court until even the prosecutor think that the effort just isn’t worth it, anymore.
A 34th District Court judge dismissed a rape case against an 18-year-old man who was charged with having sex with a 14-year-old girl who killed herself Monday.
Judge Brian Oakley dismissed the case following a brief argument after the hearing that the prosecutor’s office did not have sufficient evidence to proceed.
“Under the law we did not have sufficient evidence to prove that a crime had occurred without the testimony of the victim. As a result, we had to move to dismiss the case. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family at this difficult time,” the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
Samantha Kelly killed herself Monday after family members said students at Huron High School harassed her after learning of the charges against Joseph Tarnopolski, also a student at Huron High.
While the decision to drop prosecution efforts adds another layer of tragedy to one that is already of unbearable proportions, my scorn here is not actually directed at the prosecutors. Most rape cases rely heavily on victim testimony. And unfortunately, they no longer have it. If it were to emerge that the prosecution has access to significant other evidence that a rape occurred and are still declining to prosecute, I’d revise my opinion. But with what we know now, it’s unlikely that they are to blame.
My scorn is reserved for rapists, and just as much for those who support rapists with apologism, victim-blaming, and harassment. My scorn is reserved for those who not only fail to protect and support victims of assault, but who actively bully them. My scorn is reserved for those who decided that Samantha Kelly was a liar, chose to shout that belief from the rooftops, and actively opted to make her life a living hell.
Trigger warning for discussions of sexual violence, victim-blaming.
This morning I came across a post at a CNN blog about a new study (which has not yet been peer reviewed) on teen sex and sexual health. The aspect of the study making headlines both at CNN and elsewhere is this: “Girls take more chances during first sex.”
Even though teenage boys are known for their risky behavior, it’s girls who are more likely to engage in unprotected first sex, according to research presented Monday at an American Public Health Association meeting in Denver.
Nicole Weller, a doctoral student at Arizona State University, analyzed government data and found adolescent girls were 30 percent more likely than boys to have sex without contraception during their first sexual encounter. Weller said that surprised her.
“It does because of the history of boys engaging in risky behavior across the spectrum and then seeing that females are having first unprotected sex is telling a different story,” Weller said. For example, teenage boys are more likely than girls to drink and smoke.
This framing immediately alarmed and horrified me, as it may some of you, for reasons that the Guttmacher Institute thankfully pointed out before I could:
But Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, said boys may still have a lot to do with it. She said teenage girls are less likely than boys to want to have sex when it happens for the first time and may not do as good a job advocating for birth control. Lindberg added that contraception at first sex is 80 percent condoms, meaning birth control largely depends on the boy.
In other words? Lots and lots of girls are being raped during their “first sexual encounters.” And while some rapists do in fact use condoms, they’re not exactly the most reliable in that area. Nor, barring a few exceptions, are rape victims usually in a position to negotiate safer sex, when they’re unable to negotiate the act of not having sex at all.
And horrifically, CNN was the only source I found that seems to be reporting this relevant tidbit. Though they didn’t report that other studies have shown that a gob-smacking 10% of young women’s first intercourse is involuntary — in other words, that we’re not talking here about just a handful of cases. Further, while CNN did at least take the time to point out the likely connection between first intercourse being unwanted and first intercourse being unprotected, that didn’t stop them from using stigmatizing language about those “first sexual encounters” as “taking chances” and “risky behavior.”
I can’t quite wrap my head around that. We’re talking about young women being raped, and calling it risky behavior. We’re talking about young women being raped, and asking questions about condom use. We’re talking about young women being raped, and the biggest concern at the front of our minds is about STDs. We’re talking about young women being raped, and we’re asking why they don’t know any better?
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Today is the 
Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence against children and adolescents, as well as victim-blaming and rape apologism.
