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:
BUT LIKE… DO WOMEN ACTUALLY NEED TO SKI IN SEPARATE EVENTS FROM MEN?
FiveThirtyEight concludes their statistical analysis of men’s and women’s olympic skiing performances a bit more pessimistically than I would, given the data, but suffice it to say that the longer course lengths and greater elevation differentials in men’s courses may very well be contributing to the speeds they’re able to put up.
TL,DR: Let Lindsey Vonn race the damn dudes if she likes.
CBS: GOP WOMEN FRUSTRATED BY TRUMP
JAYE: THEN WHY THE HECK ARE YOU STILL SUPPORTING HIM?!
HEIDI STEVENS: THAT’S MAYBE NOT THE QUESTION WE SHOULD BE ASKING
JAYE: OKAY I DON’T AGREE ENTIRELY BUT IT’S A VALID POINT
I wouldn’t say Heidi’s op-ed for the Chicago Tribune justifies us taking the heat off of Shelley Moore Capito, Lisa Murkowski, et al but it does raise an interesting point about how we discuss the choices of the voters. She doesn’t say it in so many words, but internalized misogyny is a cranky ol’ bastard.
LITERATURE AND REPRESENTATION: A STUDY
This one’s interesting. The Smithsonian cites a study from the University of Illinois that used machine learning to model the relative proportion of female characters and authors in literature, beginning in the 18th century. Contrary to what you might expect, female representation on both fronts has basically been in decline from the early 1800s, when it was more or less equal to men’s; ultimately bottoming out in the 1970s. Consider, however, that the novel in Victorian times was seen more as a form of light entertainment than as any serious undertaking or piece of art. As the novel has gained respectability and artistic merit in the public eye, men have been increasingly overrepresented in the medium, to the detriment of women. Similar trends can be seen in the field of computing – as the occupation became more respectable, women were increasingly boxed out. It begs the question – is the image of literature as a “serious” field the direct result of increased pursuit by men, or have more men pursued literature because the field began to appear as more respectable?
To be fair, both options totally suck.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch
DISCUSSION TOPIC OF THE WEEK:
Yeah okay let’s do a love post.
Fuck it, it’s literally Valentine’s day. But let’s not mess this up with asking y’all about your romantic lives – or rather, let’s not exclude some of the beautiful and loving relationships we might have just to focus on the smooshy ones.
Talk about the love you have for the amazing women+ in your life. Talk about your experiences with love, be they familial, platonic, romantic, or whatever you call that feeling you have when your dog jumps into your lap after a long day. When have you felt most loved? How do you express love for the people/places/pets that you care about? How has the cultural narrative surrounding the word “love” affected your perceptions of what love can look like? Heck, I might even do a little comment about my experience with loving-kindness meditation if y’all are interested.
Also, I love all of you as much as it’s possible to love a conglomeration of similarly-experienced internet strangers 💖
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