By Ann • 17 years ago

A diaphragm renaissance?

One of the most embarrassing Sex and the City scenes was the one in which Carrie enlists Samantha’s help to remove her diaphragm. Not because the situation seemed a little intimate, even for two close friends, but because it revealed that Carrie’s chosen birth control method was the diaphragm. I mean, how retro was that? Despite conversations about ticking biological clocks and complaints about twentysomething women, the characters had always seemed pretty young to me. Until this talk of a retro method of contraception that doesn’t even prevent most STDs.
Or could it? Last week at TAP Online, Beth Schwartzapfel wrote about how the diaphragm is being re-designed using more flexible materials so that one-size-fits-all. This might make ...

One of the most embarrassing Sex and the City scenes was the one in which Carrie enlists Samantha’s help to remove her diaphragm. Not because the situation seemed a little intimate, even for two close friends, but ...
By Samhita • 17 years ago

Women protest mosque demolition in Pakistan.

A whole bunch of Islamic female students have been protesting the destruction of a series of illegally possessed mosques.

Several hundred female students from an Islamic seminary in the center of Islamabad have been holed up for the last month inside a public library, in an unprecedented protest that poses a dilemma for President Pervez Musharraf’s government.
The young women’s ostensible demand is the rebuilding of half a dozen mosques in the capital that the government tore down because they were constructed on illegally seized land. Dozens more are under demolition orders.

As the article mentions, the Western world is breathing down Musharraf’s neck to see to it that he is cracking down on radicals.
But I am more interested in the ...

A whole bunch of Islamic female students have been protesting the destruction of a series of illegally possessed mosques.

Several hundred female students from an Islamic seminary in the center of Islamabad have been holed up for the ...
By Ann • 17 years ago

Plan B-acklash

There’s apparently hell to pay when you point out that there’s no scientific or medical reason to deny women over-the-counter access to emergency contraception. Although the Bush administration and Congress requested and allocated a full $4 million in funding for the Office of Women’s Health, the FDA plans to withhold more than a quarter of that money — $1.2 million.

Martha R. Nolan, a vice president at the Society for Women’s Health Research, a Washington advocacy group, said that big budget bites in Washington are often the beginning of the end and that she worries that this is retribution for the Plan B controversy.
“We fear this is the first step toward eliminating the Office of Women’s ...

There’s apparently hell to pay when you point out that there’s no scientific or medical reason to deny women over-the-counter access to emergency contraception. Although the Bush administration and Congress requested and allocated a full ...
By Samhita • 17 years ago

46% of rural women in India don’t know about AIDS/HIV.

As health educators expand their focus in India, only 56% of all women know about HIV/AIDS in contrast to 80% of men.

The Indian government has focused its HIV/AIDS prevention efforts on high-risk groups, such as commercial sex workers and injection drug users, rather than on the general population, according to Reuters. An unnamed government official said that the government is “expanding prevention efforts among the general population in rural areas, especially women, over the next five years.” Anjali Gopalan — head of the HIV/AIDS advocacy group Naz Foundation India — said the report “shows women don’t have access to information, translating into more women getting infected.” According to Reuters, women account for 40% of HIV cases in the country. Many ...

As health educators expand their focus in India, only 56% of all women know about HIV/AIDS in contrast to 80% of men.

The Indian government has focused its HIV/AIDS prevention efforts on high-risk groups, such as commercial sex ...
By Samhita • 17 years ago

Housewives, Pole Dancing and Empowerment?


Suburban housewives dancing on poles! Everybody panic! What has the world come too?

Pole dancing, once exclusively the province of exotic dancers, has flared up as a much-hyped Hollywood exercise craze, and has seeped into the collective unconscious through shows like “The Sopranos� and “Desperate Housewives.� A variant called motorized pole dancing, which occurs in stretch limos, has raised eyebrows as far away as Britain, where some female university students pole-danced as a fund-raiser for testicular cancer. And mini-poles have even been spotted as dance props at over-the-top bat mitzvah parties in suburban precincts.
Now the pole — think ballet barre turned vertical — is the new star at racier versions of Tupperware parties in well-heeled (if high-heeled) areas like ...


Suburban housewives dancing on poles! Everybody panic! What has the world come too?

Pole dancing, once exclusively the province of exotic dancers, has flared up as a much-hyped Hollywood exercise craze, and has seeped into the collective ...
By Vanessa • 17 years ago

Babymaker2007, German Edition.

Yet another world leader calls women baby machines; it was only a month ago that Japanese Health Minister said the same. Looks like we got a best-seller.
German Bishop Walter Mixa tried to switch things up by saying that women are being degraded as “birthing machinesâ€? because of the existence of daycare. His comments were in response to new goverment proposals to expand daycare facilities, and asserted that “enticing” women to use daycare after giving birth so they can return to work was “harmful to children and familiesâ€? and lowers women to being nothing more than babymakers.
In that case, what about you Sperminators a.k.a. working fathers? No “liberation” for y’all?

Yet another world leader calls women baby machines; it was only a month ago that Japanese Health Minister said the same. Looks like we got a best-seller.
German Bishop Walter Mixa tried to ...

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