MissUnderestimated

This annoys me.

Let’s be clear - I’m a Democrat but I’m not committed to a Democratic presidential candidate at this point. I love all of the Democratic presidential candidates (except for Duncan Hunter. I don’t know anything about him.) I even have love in my heart for Dennis Kucinich. I’m proud to be a Democrat because we have awesome candidates this year and I will support whoever gets the nomination.

But I’m still annoyed.

Supporting Hillary over Obama does not make one a racist, just like supporting Obama over Hillary does not make one a sexist. Party infighting costs good candidates elections. Just ask Lincoln Chafee. Everyone is obviously entitled to their own opinion and that’s fine but when Democrats speak poorly of other Democrats, they might as well just write the Republican attack ad that’s going to run as soon as the primaries are over.

I’m offended that when Hillary won NH, there were theories as to why she won, like she couldn’t have won were it not for the Bradley effect or the primacy effect or old school racism. While the author argues that IA voters supported Obama because they have to vote in public, there’s an argument that female voters who would have voted for Hillary ended up caucusing for Obama because they wanted to stick with their husbands during the caucus.

Then there are some parts of this article that just seem absurd. Anyone who claims that the media has been anything but easy on Obama has been living on a different planet - how else can anyone explain this? How is Obama’s strategy “new and different?” He’s running Dean’s campaign except the media can’t go after Obama the way they went after Dean without being accused of being racist. And this?!

Clinton cried about being attacked in the debates, but there are no public tears shed for the strain Obama must feel as a result of death threats, which caused the doubling of his Secret Service detail.

There is absolutely no way that Obama has received more death threats in his whole life than Hillary. I’m sure that the author’s daughter was disappointed that Obama’s little girls may not move into the White House next year but I know that I’ll feel inspired to see either Obama or Hillary sworn in come January 20, 2009. Obama has a chance to run again. The author wrote that “Obama is the most viable black candidate in American history” but Hillary is the most viable female candidate in American history and, unlike Obama, she has years of experience.

The argument that Obama overcame incredible odds in 2004 to win the election is ludicrous. He was in the right place at the right time. He gave a beautiful speech at the 2004 convention but he really was in the right place at the right time - when was the last time a candidate for Senate gave the keynote at the convention?

Like I wrote, I’ll be happy to have any of the Democratic presidential candidates take the oath of office next January but I think we should try to play nice in the meantime.

I enjoyed the movie Knocked Up but I was a bit troubled by its portrayal of both women and men - and it turns out that I wasn’t the only one. In an interview, Katherine Heigl, the female lead called the movie “a little sexist.”

“It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys … It was hard for me to love the movie,” she said in a Vanity Fair interview according to Us Magazine.

Even if you didn’t see the movie, this is an interesting article that explores the stereotypes men and women experience in pop culture. It makes me think of how sexism and stereotypes hurt both men and women because women are portrayed as shrill while men are buffoons, like on Everyone Loves Raymond and, while exaggerated, on other comedies like The Simpsons and Family Guy. Are guys ever offended that so many male characters on television are dumb? I think it would bother me.

I really dig the last paragraph of the first page because it gets at something else that would drive me crazy if I were an attentive male consumer of pop culture - men are constantly portrayed as selfish, as choosing their buddies and hobbies over their families. This always drives me nuts. Think of Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles - the problem was that he couldn’t get home for Thanksgiving. Then he’s a big hero when he makes it home. So, literally, all he has to do is show up and he’s a hero. If all he has to do is show up, then how necessary to the family is he really? Mom not only showed up, she cooked the whole damn dinner while making sure the kids didn’t kill each other. And Dad’s a hero because he made it? It somehow makes men seem both unimportant and the most important thing in the world and it doesn’t make any sense.

This may not be a politically convenient time to call a spade a spade and declare that the Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenians starting in 1915 is genocide but it’s simply the right thing to do. Identifying genocide when appropriate sends a message that the international community is well aware of what’s going on.

Need proof? In a 1939 military conference before Germany’s invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler said:

“I have placed my death-head formation in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language … Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

If we’re going to prevent the next Hitler from thinking he can get away with genocide, we must speak of the Armenian genocide.

Musekeweya (”new dawn”) is a phenomenally popular radio drama broadcast out of Kigali, Rwanda. The soap, funded by Dutch non-proft La Benevolencija, follows the story of two star-crossed lovers who come from opposing villages involved in an increasingly violent struggle. Though Rwandian law makes it difficult to discuss the genocide in the media, the show aims to open a dialog using the fictional villages of Bumanzi and Muhumuro as a proxy for Hutus and Tutsis.

A soap opera may seem like an unlikely vehicle to tackle a topic of such national importance, but it’s actually not uncommon. And, certainly, Rwanda is a country that knows all too well about the power of radio.

A story in Campus Progress reported on a Conservative Women’s Network luncheon held at the Heritage Foundation on June 24 attended by about 70 young women in which Jennifer Marshall talked about her book, Now and Not Yet: Making Sense of Single Life in the Twenty First Century.

Like many conservative women, Marshall enjoys the benefits of feminism while speaking ill of it. She explained that she and other women have benefitted from the increased opportunities that feminism brought yet it “does at a very personal level affect our lives in a very negative way.”

Marshall told attendees, “Don’t be a workaholic . . . Be open to rearranging your professional life for a husband.” Life should change for both of the people in a couple when they get married and women need to make sure that they protect their financial futures while married because women are more likely than men to live in poverty after a divorce.

Moreover, Marshall repeated that women should “have a sense of purpose anchored in God,” which is wonderful for those who are spiritual, but when asked about those who aren’t, she answered, “A self-centered view is very isolationist.”

So young women have to go to be prepared to surrender future financial stability and go to church to land a man? I’m not buying it and I’m not the only one - Now and Not Yet is ranked 13,256th place on Amazon’s bestseller list (under God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens at #11, by the way).

“Instead of ending conversations with those who embrace feminist ideals, conservatives should recognize the advances the movement has offered to women everywhere. Without it, single women would have no hope for self-advancement and the satisfaction that Marshall spoke about,” the article concluded. Word.

The Health Ministry in Egypt recently eliminated a provision allowing the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) “in situations of illness” if recommended by a doctor according to The New York Times. The decision came after an 11 year old girl, Badour Shaker died during the procedure at a private clinic. A 2005 UN report estimated that 97 percent of women ages 15 to 49 had had the procedure.

Shaker’s mother said she paid $9 for her daughter to receive the procedure and that the doctor offered her $3,000 to withdraw the lawsuit accusing the doctor of malpractice. A forensic inquiry showed that the girl died of an anesthesia overdose according to the San Jose Mercury News. Egyptian newspapers reported that the day of Shaker’s death, she shared candy with her classmates to celebrate her good grades.

The supreme religious authorities in Egypt stressed after Shaker’s death that Islam is against FGM. “It is prohibited, prohibited, prohibited,” Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said.

This chart from the Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project shows the incidence of FGM from country to country. The World Health Organization reported that as many as 140 million women worldwide have gone through FGM and about 2 million women are at risk for it annually.

Side effects of FGM include abscess formation, cysts, excessive growth of scar tissue, urinary tract infection, painful sexual intercourse and menstruation, increased susceptibility to HIV/AIDS, reproductive tract infection, pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, urinary incontinence, obstructed labor, and increased risk of bleeding and infection during childbirth according to UNICEF.

While it’s clearly a positive development that Egypt has prohibited FGM, it’s horrifying that the practice remains as widespread as it is.

Thanks to Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., a nine year old ban on using federal funding for needle exchange programs in the District of Columbia was lifted. The ban was taken out of the House version of a $21 billion funding bill for more than two dozen federal agencies and DC according to The Washington Post.

Gregg Pane, DC’s health director said that his department would dedicate $1 million to support needle exchange programs in 2008. “It’s a landmark day,” he said, “something folks in D.C. have worked for for many, many years.”

DC has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infections in the country. One in 20 adults in the District has the virus and a third of those infected are intravenous drug users. IV drug use is the number one way the virus is transmitted to infected women in the District and second to unprotected sex for men, according to an article in The New York Times about Prevention Works, DC’s privately-funded needle exchange program.

There are more than 210 needle exchange programs in 36 states and more than half of them receive local or state funding according to the North American Syringe Exchange Network.

Prevention Works will likely receive a big portion of the federal funding freed up for needle exchange programs. “I can’t believe it,” Paola Barahona, Prevention Works executive director said. “It’s been so long. Finally, finally, public health overcomes politics.”

The Drug Policy Alliance issued a statement supporting the end to the ban on needle exchange programs and said that such programs were endorsed by the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control and American Public Health Association as a way to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS without increasing drug use.

In 2006, Prevention Works disposed of more than 236,000 contaminated needles with a $385,000 budget. Needle exchange programs and support services in New York City receive more than $3 million in state and local funding. Ron Daniels, Prevention Works director told The New York Times, “For every person I help, there’s seven more I can’t reach. But I’d be reaching a lot more if my hands weren’t tied.”

Hopefully this will untie his hands. The bill now goes to the Senate for approval.

Update: NPR pointed out this morning that the money DC will be allowed to use for needle exchange programs if this bill passes the Senate is actually DC’s own money. One myth or misunderstanding about how DC’s budget works is that the federal government gives the District money and that DC residents don’t pay federal taxes. DC residents do pay federal taxes. Congress takes the money we pay in and then gives it back to us after telling us what we can and can’t do with it. It’s not right but allowing us to spend our own money on a needle exchange program to help stop the spread of AIDS is a step in the right direction.

Reports of AIDS among women in the U.S. rose 17 percent from 2001 to 2005 and the virus is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 25-34 according to a new story in AlterNet.

Men still make up the majority of HIV/AIDS cases but 9,800 women were newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2005. Sixty-four percent of U.S. women living with HIV/AIDS are African-American and 15 percent are Latina. Only heart disease and cancer kill more women annually and HIV/AIDS is in the top four causes of death for African-American and Latina women in the U.S.

Looking at the way most women have been getting infected can help identify prevention strategies. Seventy five percent of African-American women and 70 percent of Latina women became infected from heterosexual contact. Researchers are looking into using microbicides and diaphragms to see if they can be used to prevent infection.

One reason this research is so important is because both microbicides and diaphragms, if effective in protecting women from AIDS would empower them to protect themselves. As Bindiya Gillenwater Patel from the Global Campaign for Microbicides said, “Right now our only ways of protecting ourselves are the ABCs: abstaining, being faithful, using a condom. But that doesn’t work for all of us. We can’t be sure that our partner’s going to be faithful or we can’t negotiate using a condom … We need a tool that we can initiate, that we don’t have to depend on anybody else for.”

After finding out that their student health insurance plan didn’t cover Gardasil, the vaccine that protects against HPV (which causes cervical cancer), students at Yale University persuaded university health services to include coverage for the vaccine under the student health insurance policy, Campus Progress reported.

Most student health insurance plans don’t cover vaccines. Gardasil costs about $360 total for all three shots, which is a lot to cough up for most young women, including college students. Yale’s effort was successful in part because the university determines what the plan covers, unlike some smaller schools that are covered by larger policies.

Yale’s student health insurance plan will cover Gardasil for the 2007-2008 school year, though it is subject to a $100 deductible and a 20 percent copay. The students consider it a step in the right direction.

As with women’s health services, Gardasil’s availability is meaningless if it isn’t accessible and affordable.  Gardasil is available for free to women ages 11 to 18 in New Hampshire - since it’s not required, they haven’t faced a backlash for offering it and a lot of women have gotten vaccinated. Hopefully other states will follow New Hampshire’s lead.