Hello, and welcome to the weekly women+’s issues/health thread!
Each Wednesday, someone will post a discussion with a few relevant news items from the last week, as well as a topic for further conversation. The prompt will serve as a starting point for those who may want to participate but don’t have a topic of their own they’d like to discuss – as long as it’s relevant to the discussion as a whole, anything goes.
Some guidelines to help this space be a positive experience for everyone:
☮ As always with the AVCAD, don’t feel compelled to share beyond your comfort level.
☮ Anyone who identifies as female, or who was socialized female/AFAB/otherwise has firsthand experience with the issues being discussed, is welcome to post. If you identify as cis-male, we ask that you please set your participation to “lurk” mode, unless otherwise explicitly invited to participate further (i.e. if we did an AMA kind of thread). I’m sure there’s plenty to be gleaned just by reading!
☮ Please do your best to be mindful of others’ experiences when commenting or posing questions for the group. The female identity is Legion and contains multitudes, and not everyone who has experience with being treated as female by society identifies as female. Furthermore, racial and ethnic identities, sexual orientation, and many other factors can color how one experiences their gender identity on a day-to-day basis. Simply put,
Updates from the world of womanity:
SEXISM IS COSTING THE US $1.6 TRILLION
According to Standard & Poor’s, the group behind the S&P 500 stock inventory thingy (so hopefully they know what they’re talking about), if women were entering and staying in the US workforce at the same rate as they are in Norway (an arguably more equitable land, though we should be careful not to paint Scandinavia as some feminist utopia), the US economy would be $1.6 trillion dollars larger than it is today.
CNN’s got probably my favorite headline related to it: “Time magazine has sided with women over the misogynist-in-chief”
Damn straight.
MEN CONTINUE TO BE TRASH BY BANNING WOMEN FOR SAYING MEN ARE TRASH
Look, we shouldn’t have to specify #notallmen every fucking time we need to vent about the shit ones. But Facebook seems to think otherwise – multiple accounts of women being banned for comments like “men are scum” are circulating the interwebs.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.” – Flannery O’Connor
DISCUSSION TOPIC OF THE WEEK:
I bungled this week about as well, but there’s been a lot of downer stuff going on lately, so let’s talk about hope.
What going on in the world these days gives you hope for women? For the future? Any little thing is good.
If you want to sign up to do this post in a future week, go right ahead! This list serves as both a sign-up sheet and as an archive for old topics. Check it out! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nBFdVjBdMVCwjw_H7R-k9qwthgV6HrzNiOtkKjxq8sk/edit?usp=sharing