Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

The wait for Plan B and some "shocking" news

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

NARAL Pro-Choice America has launched a new campaign website called Women are Waiting, to draw up support for pushing the FDA into making a decision on Plan B. The site also displays a clock showing how long the FDA has stalled on making its decision and recent press releases dealing with the FDA’s dragging-its-feet-tactics such as this one…

November 14, 2005 GAO report confirms “unusual” process for Plan BÂ® application for over-the-counter status.

This is GAO’s report, and here’s an interesting section from it via Think Progress (because that damn pdf thing won’t work on my laptop– hat-tip to Think Progress)….

FDA officials, including the Director and Deputy Director of the Office of New Drugs and the Directors of the Offices of Drug Evaluation III and V, told us that they were told by high-level management that the Plan B OTC switch application would be denied months before staff had completed their reviews of the application. The Director and Deputy Director of the Office of New Drugs told us that they were told by the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Operations43 and the Acting Director of CDER, after the Plan B public meeting in December 2003, that the decision on the Plan B application would be not-approvable. They informed us that they were also told that the direction for this decision came from the Office of the Commissioner. … Both office reviews were not completed until April 2004.

Well isn’t that grand. Playing politics at the expense of others, but it’s just women’s health and reproductive rights we’re talking about here. No big deal. And lastly, some shocking (not really) news about Dubya’s new wingnut golden boy and SCOTUS nominee Alito….

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, wrote that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion” in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.

“I personally believe very strongly” in this legal position, Mr. Alito wrote on his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III.

The document, which is likely to inflame liberals who oppose Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, is among many that the White House will release today from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

In direct, unambiguous language, the young career lawyer who served as assistant to Solicitor General Rex E. Lee, demonstrated his conservative bona fides as he sought to become a political appointee in the Reagan administration.

“I am and always have been a conservative,” he wrote in an attachment to the noncareer appointment form that he sent to the Presidential Personnel Office. “I am a lifelong registered Republican.”

But his statements against abortion and affirmative action might cause him headaches from Democrats and liberals as he prepares for confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled for January.

“It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan’s administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly,” he wrote.

“I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” […]

Comforting. And here I thought he said Roe deserves respect. Well maybe he’s changed his mind since ’85. Of course NARAL has responded to this new finding. Politics…..

Dysfunction or Dissatisfaction?

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

When it comes to discussing Female Sexual Dysfunction (or perhaps Dissatisfaction), all the medical jargon and scientific theories as to why women “don’t like sex and are therefore dysfunctional” come out. Some doctors and pharmacists think FSD can be easily solved with a pill or patch– no big deal. However does this “just give ’em a pill or a patch, and they’ll start happily humpin’ and climaxing” line of thinking conveniently gloss over the larger issue that some women are perhaps dissatisfied in their intimate relationships? What about stress from working, having to take care of children, and running errands all day? What about their past experiences with sex? Were some of them sexually abused or raped? What if the environment within their relationship and their partner make them feel uncomfortable about discussing their sexuality? What about society’s stigmas around women being open and frank about their sexuality? Does a male-dominated medical and scientific field have anything to do with the lack of human-oriented (as in actually talking to women and getting them to be more open and frank) research of FSD? Don’t these other concerns matter in the debate over FSD? Or are some women just doomed to remain sexually dissatisfied or dysfunctional for various reasons? Sigh— just keep on faking it, ladies (or visit your local sex-toy store). Well Planned Parenthood has recently put out an interesting article on FSD and the issues surrounding the “controversy” of women’s sexuality and women being open and discussing their sexuality.

[…]FSD: New and Improved!

One thing is clear: the FSD of today is not what it used to be. FSD was originally defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the psychiatric world, as a psychiatric disorder that was usually treatable with therapy for the individual or the couple.

But the staggering market success of Viagra, a drug prescribed for erectile dysfunction (ED), prompted pharmaceutical companies to consider treating female sexual problems in the same manner. The first hurdle, however, was that female sexual problems are not as clearly defined or as objectively measurable as (ED), or impotence. Female complaints tend to be more vague, like lack of interest or problems with arousal … neither of which lends itself to medical diagnosis and treatment.[…]

A New Definition Under Fire

[…]Critics argued that the “new” FSD was a useless category as far as genuine scientific and medical research were concerned. One reason was the subjectivity of the disorder. Two women, for example, who share the same symptoms could have different diagnoses based on whether or not they felt bothered by the symptoms.[…]

Dr. Leonore Tiefer is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and a leader of the New View campaign, an “educational campaign to challenge the medicalization of women’s sexual problems.” She calls FSD “a garbage lumping-together of apples and oranges and all kinds of things.” She argues that labeling a disparate collection of symptoms as “dysfunction” results in the oversimplification of the more nuanced and complex problems some women have with sex.[…]

Dr. Jean Fourcroy, a retired medical officer from the FDA who is now a consultant, was among those who addressed the researchers who convened to redefine FSD in 1998. She began her presentation by drawing a circle with the word “women” in the center, and arrows pointing inward from every direction. The arrows represented different factors that could affect women’s sexual feelings. “Most of them,” she says, “have to do with the environment or relationships.”

Fourcroy says that the medical and biological problems that can … and do … affect women’s sexual interest are “one very small part” of the whole picture. She worries that the attempt to find a medical silver bullet to solve women’s sexual problems will gloss over the many environmental and personal issues that comprise the larger part of the picture.

For example, being in an environment or with a partner that makes discussing one’s sexuality and desires (in this case a woman’s) uncomfortable. Some women don’t want to discuss their sexual desires and sexuality because they think it might “intimidate” their partners, or make them appear to be “slutty,” or knowing “too much” about sex and the intimate regions of their bodies.

What the Future May Hold

[…]”We need to learn a lot about hormones,” says Fourcroy. She is highly critical of what she sees as a push to market off-label use of hormones to treat women’s sexual problems. “No one has ever proved that there is a deficiency disease,” she says. “When we treat hypogonadism in men [a condition in which there is low or no production of sex hormones in the testes], we can measure it. We can’t measure [FSD] in women, because we don’t know enough.”

Ideally, the future will bring much more research that will tell us about the long- and short-term effects of hormones on women, and whether medical treatment of FSD is even appropriate in the vast majority of cases. At the very least, Fourcroy and Tiefer both hope that the increased interest in FSD will increase communication about things like female desire and arousal and will spur women to discuss their sexual issues with both partners and practitioners. “In the ideal world, I would like to have every provider comfortable discussing sexuality instead of pushing drugs on [women],” Fourcroy says. […]

Hey, if a pill can solve ED surely you can do the same thing for FSD, right? And apparently this is the latest in women gaining “equal sexuality rights.” No comment from me on vaginal rejuvenation (I’m still debating that with myself), but Jessica over at Feministing has one. Anyway, to me the problem is that some women still feel uncomfortable and even ashamed about discussing their sexuality due to social stigmas and taboos, especially when it comes to women wanting to be equally pleased in bed like their partners. Rather than just lying there like an empty vessel who moans on cue in order to please someone else, and completely ignore their own desires. So until this issue is solved, like I said, just keep faking it. Or better yet, find someone who is willing and open to discuss your sexuality and sexual desires.

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc | 23 Comments

Paul Krugman on Universal Health Care

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Ampersand

Brad DeLong quotes Paul Krugman on single-payer health care… read through both the post and the comments. Here are a couple of my favorite bits.

…The solution – national health insurance, available to everyone – is obvious. But to see the obvious we’ll have to overcome pride – the unwarranted belief that America has nothing to learn from other countries – and prejudice – the equally unwarranted belief, driven by ideology, that private insurance is more efficient than public insurance. […]

Taiwan, which moved 10 years ago from a U.S.-style system to a Canadian-style single-payer system, offers an object lesson in the economic advantages of universal coverage. In 1995 less than 60 percent of Taiwan’s residents had health insurance; by 2001 the number was 97 percent. Yet… this huge expansion in coverage came virtually free: it led to little if any increase in overall health care spending beyond normal growth due to rising population and incomes. […]

One way to implement national health care would simply be to expand Medicare to everyone.

Of course, doing that would require additional funds, probably in the form of an increase in the payroll tax. And that would elicit howls from the right. But the apparent rise in tax rates would be an illusion: it would simply substitute an explicit tax for the implicit tax that companies and workers pay in the form of insurance premiums. Given international experience, I have no doubt that overall spending on health care would actually fall, and that job creation would actually rise, after the supposed tax increase.

It’s a simple solution, building on a program that we already know works. It would make the vast majority of Americans better off. And it’s considered a complete non-starter politically. Now why is that?

Worldwide, I think the biggest single justice issue is the treatment of women in the third world, who are the poorest and most oppressed of the poorest and most oppressed. But within the United States, the lack of affordable medical care for poor and working-class people may be the most pressing – and also most clearly solvable – injustice we face.

(More Krugman here).

Posted in Whatever | 29 Comments

Rape and Imprisonment By Proxy At McDonalds

Posted on November 11, 2005 by Ampersand

From my inbox:

Amp-

Did you watch Primetime, on ABC last night? If not, here’s a link. I’ll give your a brief overview of the piece. I’d sure like to see this discussed online.

The segment was about an incident that occurred at a McDonalds in KY. A caller phoned the shift manager, telling her that he was a police officer who needed her help in conducting an investigation of a teen employee, then on-duty, believed to have stolen a purse from a customer. The caller then made a series of instructions over about a three hour period, that led to the girl being strip searched, spanked, and humiliated. Finally, the supervisor is asked to bring her fiancÃ© in to watch the girl, while the supervisor returns to work at the counter. The “police officer” then instructs the fiancÃ© to have a girl perform a sex act on him, which he complies with. The girl is crying throughout this ordeal. At no point does anyone question the authenticity of the call, except for one teen worker who leaves in disgust, saying it’s all BS. The security camera in the office, captured the entire assault.

It’s the most troubling thing I seen, and frankly it kept me awake last night. The individual who made the call had been made hundreds of such calls to fast food restaurants all over the country. In 70 cases, the person answering the phone, complied with his requests, resulting in strip searches of employees and customers, and in some instances, cavity searches.

This case should spark a needed debate on our willingness to blindly respect “authority” figures, and our accountability when we participate in immoral acts.

Thanks-
Emmetropia

It’s a pretty stunning story. The person who made the call, David Stewart, is a prison guard who had fantasies about being a cop; he’s now under arrest, charged with “solicitation of sodomy and impersonating a police officer.” The fiancÃ© “has pleaded not guilty to charges of sodomy and sexual assault.” And the victim is suing McDonalds and the manager for false imprisonment.

Posted in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 77 Comments

Conservative Law Professors on Same-Sex Marriage

Posted on November 11, 2005 by Ampersand

Dale Carpenter has finished his Volokh guest-blogging on same-sex marriage. (Actually, he finished last week.)

Although there are some minor details I disagree with, on the whole I think Dale did a wonderful job laying out the case for same-sex marriage – well-organized and well argued. He broke his discussion into subtopics, so I’d encourage marriage-debate mavens to look through his posts, where you’ll surely find something of interest.

And speaking of Volokh, Eugene Volokh has written a detailed analysis of slippery-slope arguments, and how they do (and don’t) apply to same-sex marriage. (Pdf link.) It’s 47 pages, and I for one found it entertaining and informative.

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 17 Comments

Bradford Plumer on Savings and Debt

Posted on November 11, 2005 by Ampersand

From a post by Bradford Plumer…

Looking at the BLS’s 2003 Consumer Survey, the people who save in this country are overwhelmingly wealthy. The bottom income quintile pulls home $8,201 a year before taxes, and spends $18,492. Meanwhile, the top quintile hauls home $127,146 a year before taxes, and spends $81,731. The poor are borrowing to the hilt and the rich are happy to oblige them. At the end of 2004, the amount of after tax income that went towards debt service was roughly 16 percent, and those numbers are much higher for low-income families. Bankruptcies are skyrocketing. So why are these families borrowing so much? Robert Pollin of EPI put out a study in 1990 arguing that the bottom 40 percent of Americans were borrowing to compensate for stagnant or falling wages. More recently, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi’s Two-Income Trap compiled similar evidence…the 6,000 percent increase in credit card debt between 1968 and 2000 didn’t come about because people were buying frivolities; they’re simply trying to tread water, pay for health care, that sort of thing.

Now obviously if you’re in the creditor class, this state of affairs looks pretty damn good. Not only do you earn interest on your surplus funds, but mass borrowing among low-income Americans reduces pressure for higher wages, by letting them buy stuff they couldn’t otherwise afford, and it certainly makes America look like a middle-class consumer society, thus staving off the angry hordes from rioting.[…]

The downside, of course, is that among the lower classes, very few people have much wealth to speak of. The richest 10 percent of Americans own 79.8 percent of all financial assets. The bottom 40 percent, collectively, own as much in liabilities as in assets. (Average wealth among the bottom 10 percent has been consistently declining since the 1960s.) Among minorities, especially African-Americans and non-white Hispanics, the disparities are even worse. In 2001, the average black household had a net worth equal to about 14 percent of the average white household.

Here’s what I always wonder about fundimentalist Christians: Why aren’t they interested in putting an end to predatory lending practices? The Bible is very clear about the matter, and yet – at least here in Oregon – the party of right-wing Christian politicians firmly oppose proposals to reign in predatory lending practices.

I’m frankly terrified by how little wealth low-income Americans have, especially when you consider how little most people have put aside for retirement. A TV report I saw this morning claimed that the typical American has less than $20,000 put aside for retirement (in an 401K or the like), and even among Americans over 55 the average is less than $100,000 (and presumably much, much lower among low-wage workers). Social Security is going to survive – but Social Security is meant to be a suppliment, not an entire retirement. And for everyone but some firefighters and cops, “pension” is becoming an obsolete concept, like churning butter or sewing your own clothes.

Elder poverty is going to be huge in 30 years time.

Posted in Economics and the like | 53 Comments

On victim-blaming and control

Posted on November 10, 2005 by Nick Kiddle

It’s virtually a law of Internet discussion that any conversation about rape will turn into a debate about the need for women to keep themselves safe. The attitude that women have the responsibility to protect themselves from rape is, at the most generous reading, an uncritical acceptance of the idea that men cannot be prevented from raping. At its worst, it is yet another example of the way society makes women responsible for anything men dislike. And all the while, there is no acknowledgement that this is just the mechanism by which sexist men can benefit from rape without themselves committing it.

That women are sexual beyond the ways men wish them to be disturbs a certain kind of man. The fears that once kept female sexuality in check are gradually being eroded by social change and medical advances: fear of ostracism, fear of disease, fear of unwanted pregnancy. But fear of rape remains, and it can be a powerful weapon.

There was one piece of fall-out from the paratrooper incident that I didn’t mention. A family member learned that I’d gone back to the camp with a couple of men for sex. He had no reason to think anything non-consensual had happened, but he was horrified all the same. He told me that my behaviour was disgusting and that I should be ashamed of myself. Friends and other family members defended his attitude by pointing out what many people in the other thread pointed out – that I’d put myself at quite some risk.

That explanation failed to convince me. Disgust and shame are appropriate responses to moral wrongdoing, not foolhardy risk-taking. He was horrified that I’d allowed myself to be sexual in an unapproved way; the risk of rape was a justification, not his true motivation.

It shocks some people that I want sex and don’t want to submit to male authority. It shocks them even more that these two desires outweigh my fear of rape, so that I dare to gratify both by picking up paratroopers in a pub. The “prudent” suggestions for keeping myself safe always boil down to giving up sex (or at least, the kind of sex I’m interested in) or submitting to male authority.

These “solutions” might well have no effect on my risk of being raped. But even if they were guaranteed to protect me from all risk, they wouldn’t be worth it. I think I’d rather be raped than spend the rest of my life turning aside from what I wanted and settling for something less. I know I’d rather take risks than allow fear of rape to control my expression of my sexuality.

In my ideal world, men would not be tempted to commit rape. Sexual encounters would be handled with negotiation, not with one partner’s insistence on getting what he wants at the expense of another. Men would respect the desires of women to control what happens to their bodies, whether they’ve known each other for ten minutes or ten years.

And in my ideal world, the fear of rape could not be used as a justification for slut-shaming.

Posted in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 262 Comments

Interesting Sweeny Todd Revival on Broadway

Posted on November 10, 2005 by Ampersand

Interesting New York Times article about a new revival of what may be my favorite musical, Sweeny Todd, on Broadway. In this production, the entire action takes place inside an asylum, and the actors are also the orchestra. When I first heard about this production, it sounded gimmicky, but the more I read about it the more I wish I could be in New York to see it.

So what else have I read about it? Very little: Arthur Silber’s excellent post about the production at his new blog Once Upon A Time, and the Times review (not the same as the other Times article linked), which is what could fairly be called a rave.

Posted in Popular (and unpopular) culture | 7 Comments