feminist blogs in english

by Amanda Marcotte

Very good news from the world of medicine---The Lancet has completely retracted the article they published in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield that links autism to vaccines.  As Phil Plait notes, the link between vaccines and autism has been discredited for a long time, but this is basically the end of even the slimmest scientific argument against vaccines.  The single reputable publication that has ever had anything to do with the anti-vax movement has cut all ties.  This is a moment to celebrate.

And to mourn.  Because despite this remarkable good news, anti-vaxxers won’t lay off, even more a moment.  In fact, I suspect they’ll redouble their efforts.  Like their fellows in the art of science denialism---global warming deniers and evolutionary theory deniers---the very existence of scientists who understand this stuff is considered an affront they’ve been put on earth to correct.  And so when the scientists are right, with their science and their evidence and their understanding, they just piss the denialists off even more. They may adjust their arguments around scientific evidence, but they don’t give up or admit they’re wrong.  Adjusting what you think based on solid evidence is what scientists do, and scientists are the enemy.  Scientists think they know better because they actually know better.  Experts think learning provides wisdom.  And anti-vaxxers are on the side of “mommy instinct” and quite a bit of hostility towards experts.

I don’t want to be this harsh, because I think a lot of people in the anti-vaccination movement got there because they’ve been traumatized by having an autistic child, and they’re looking for answers.  And the anti-vaxxers give them a very flattering answer, which is that the fault doesn’t lie with their genetics, but with the choices made by experts, who can be easily villainized.  The narrative established is hard for some parents of autistic children to resist---that they are 100% blameless, that this disease was caused by doing the right thing in vaccinating your children.  But at this point, the anti-vaccination movement is a lot bigger than a few well-meaning parents of autistic children who’ve been misled by people telling tantalizing lies.  I’d argue most of the true believers at this point are yuppie parents of mentally normal children who are refusing to vaccinate for a bundle of reasons, the two big ones being the hyper-parenting culture that leads you to believe you can control everything with nutrition and good parenting, and probably a dose of exceptionalism that comes with their class status.  Those folks really have no excuse. 

The anti-vaccination movement has edged away from the autism stuff anyway, and like all good denialist movements, it has changed its claims.  Now it’s less panicking over autism, and a lot more demands for “green” vaccines and vague panics about “toxins”.  It’s perfectly pitched to the crowd that’s interested in the “organic” label because they think it has health benefits (instead of on the more scientific grounds that it’s less environmentally damaging).  This claim about “green” vaccines is scary, because it allows anti-vaxxers both to claim they have a standard for vaccines that can be reached, while actually not having such a standard.  Just as creationists won’t give up an inch, but just refine their pitch, anti-vaxxers who fling the word “toxic” around have a perfect word to make sure they never have to concede the argument.  “Toxic” is one of those words that can mean just about anything.  And most importantly, since vaccines are there to provoke your immune system, the dead virus itself could be called “toxic”, making this a no-win argument on those terms. 

None of this is to say we should give up and let the anti-vaxxers win, of course.  But just know that it’s far from over.  In a lot of ways, the emptying out of any real scientific claims means the battle’s probably just begun. 

A new kind of emergency contraception, ellaOne, works to prevent pregnancy up to five days after unprotected sex.

The EC sold in the U.S. is levonorgestrel, sold under the brand name Plan B; ellaOne is the drug ulipristal acetate, and it's only available in Europe. Though it's limited availability hasn't stopped anti-choicers in the U.S. from laying the groundwork for a fight.

Donna Harrison, president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says that "this is a thinly-veiled attempt to get an abortion drug over-the-counter." A headline from LifeNews says the drug "causes abortions."

UK anti-choicers are chiming in as well, like Joanne Hill from the organization LIFE, who says that "more casual sex and more unintended pregnancy will inevitably be the result" of ellaOne.

Obviously, these are all the same arguments we heard when the FDA was considering approving Plan B for over-the-counter status, and the "it will make girls slutty" line is one we're familiar with from EC and Gardasil battles.

So while I'm happy to know ellaOne is effective, I'm not holding my breath for it to be introduced - or made available anytime soon - in the U.S.

I just caught this on CNN: a 1998 study “showing” a link between measles vaccinations and autism has been retracted by The Lancet. The 1998 Wakefield et al. paper reported that in a study of 12 children, GI abnormalities and onset of autism was associated with a measles vaccination were found in 8 of the patients, leading the authors of the paper to conclude that the measles vaccination led to failure of the GI tract, causing waste to enter the blood and producing autism.

As you can see from the Pubmed abstract, the 1998 Wakefield et al. paper attracted heavy criticism and comment, sparking a heated debate in the published literature. Walker-Smith’s lab (out of which the original 1998 paper was published) issued a partial retraction in 2004, clarifying that the original paper was not intended to demonstrate a causal link between measles vaccine and autism. Furthermore, many papers published by other investigators subsequent to Wakefield et al. demonstrated findings contradicting Wakefield’s initial causal conclusion — yet, in the popular media, Wakefield et al’s paper became a fundamental piece of “evidence” in the growing anti-vaccination hysteria that has taken the country by storm over the last decade.

Well, score one for the scientists: this morning, The Lancet issued a historic retraction of the entire Wakefield et al. 1998 paper. The retraction read only three sentences long, yet I think it’s implications are profound: 

Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al1 are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.2 In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.

Basically, here’s what happened — recently, the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel met to discuss and review the investigative and ethical practices of the original 1998 Wakefield et al. paper. The panel found that, contrary to earlier reports, the study used shady and unethical practices for recruiting patients and collecting data, including Wakefield paying children for their blood samples at his son’s birthday party.

For those of you who don’t know, all human studies (like all animal studies) undergo a rigorous review prior to implementation to ensure that patient safety and scientific rigor are maintained. Very rarely does an investigator implement such poor scientific method that they invalidate their own findings, yet it turns out that Wakefield was one of these scientists.

Hopefully, this full retraction will begin to dismantle the rampant anti-vaccination hysteria we’ve seen in association with flu vaccines, chicken pox vaccines, and the latest H1N1 vaccine. I find parents’ fear of vaccination to be anti-intellectual at its core; they fear what they don’t understand.

But let’s get it straight: vaccines don’t hurt you, they help you. Vaccines can save your child’s life, and they sure as heck won’t give your kid autism. Go get your kid vaccinated already; when your kid gets sick, it’s already too late.

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I haven't been able to find any other material on this, but several readers have sent this in from the Globe and Mail. And it is disturbing.

Medical students routinely practice doing internal pelvic examinations while surgery patients are unconscious, and without getting specific consent, at least in Canada.

Guidelines in the United States and Britain say specific consent is required but, by contrast, Canadian guidelines state that pelvic examination by trainees is "implicit."

The practice - one of those dirty little secrets of medicine - has been exposed in a thoughtful, professional manner by a young doctor.

The story goes back to 2007 when Sara Wainberg was a medical student at McMaster University. Her younger brother Daniel, also studying to be a doctor, phoned for advice: As part of his rotation in obstetrics and gynecology, he had been asked to perform a pelvic exam on a woman who was under anesthetic. He refused, saying doing so without consent would be unethical.

"It got me thinking," Sara Wainberg said. "I had done this numerous times in my training and it had never occurred to me that it might be unethical."

She polled her fellow students and found 72 per cent had also done exams on unconscious patients, without consent, confirming that it is routine.

I am appalled and disgusted. This seems like such an obvious violation that I can't conceive of how it is allowed. If you have more info leave it in comments.

Who says girls don't know science? Not Li Boynton. The science genius and high school senior has been asked to sit next to Michelle Obama at tonight's State of the Union address. Conducting some serious science experiments since she was ten, check out her most recent endeavor:

Boynton's premier achievement as a young scientist was creation of a method to test for water pollutants by using light-generating bacteria. The student found that the microscopic organisms generated less light as the water's toxicity grew.

By placing a bacterial culture in a light-tight box with a digital camera and processing the results through a free computer program, Boynton was able to reliably and cheaply test for half a dozen common pollutants. The technology, which won top science and engineering fair honors, has potential for testing water purity in developing nations where more costly testing procedures are not an option.

Worldwide, approximately 1 billion people lack access to safe water; 3.5 million die each year as a result.

She also finds out today if she has won the Intel's Science Talent Search for this research, which is the nation's highest honor for high school science studies. I don't doubt this is the beginning of many major contributions Boynton will be making to the field -- and to the world. Good luck, Li!

Pic via Melissa Phillip Chronicle.

A sexist headline today on BBC, "Pretty Women 'Anger More Easily." A study done by the University of California found that women that considered themselves to be attractive, also seemed to have a temper, which led to the conclusion that "pretty women" are more likely to be angry. This study makes me angry and it is not because I am pretty.

There is no standard "pretty," so it is hard to build a study around it, but I do actually see the possibility that if someone thinks that they fit into certain pre-established standards of attractiveness, there sense of entitlement is greater than someone who has internalized the belief that they don't.

But that is too simplistic, since women of all shapes, sizes and colors suffer from sexist treatment and that affects their behavior in some way. In some ways I almost see these findings as potential hopeful since women that are classified as "pretty women" are often urged to stay quiet and not get angry.

But ultimately, I think the headline is misleading. This study doesn't prove that women that consider themselves to fall into society's definition of attractive are more likely to get angry (also remember it is a very very small sample size so hard to draw generalizations). But it shows that they may potentially have a higher sense of self worth and entitlement because our culture rewards women for what they look like, as opposed to what they are about. I bet if they did a study of women that identify as feminists, they would find out that statistically they too get very angry and have a high sense of what they should have access to. Just saying.

This was originally posted at Girl w/Pen


Do you ever think, “Duh!?” when you read a news story about how fattening movie popcorn or fast food is for us? I get that same feeling when I read that yet another research study has been published proving that girls and boys are equally good at math. How much more proof do we need?

Professor Marcia Linn’s paper focuses in on why there are differences in girls confidence around the world. The answer? Social expectations. [PDF link]

A society’s gendered division of labor fosters the development of gender differences in behavior by affording different restrictions and opportunities to males and females on the basis of their social roles….if the cultural roles that women fulfill do not include math, girls may face both structural obstacles (e.g., formal access to education is limited to boys) and social obstacles (e.g., stereotypes that math is a male domain) that impede their mathematical development.

Many people like to believe that we live in a post-feminist society. The evidence includes Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and women making up half of the workforce. But girls and boys still receive messages on a daily basis that they have roles to play and only those roles. As recently as this past holiday toy buying season, Toys R Us advertised three different magnification power microscopes and  telescopes, guess which one had the lowest power? Yup, the pink one.

Some will argue that we need to pinkify science things to attract girls, but do they also need weaker microscopes too?

And that brings us to another Duh moment…Pink often does stink.

A new study by Professor Robert J. DeRubeis of the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that

Antidepressant medications likely provide little or no benefit to people with mild or moderate depression. . . Rather, the mere act of seeing a doctor, discussing symptoms and learning about depression probably triggers the improvements many patients experience while on medication.

Really? There actually needed to be a study demonstrating this? Even the relentless pharmaceutical companies have recognized that anti-depressants are useless. These powerful drug-pushing concerns have been brainwashing the public for decades with their mantra of "depression is a chemical imbalance in

your brain which we will cure by a prescription medication. Or two. Or three, if you are stupid enough to buy into our advertisement of an anti-depressant on top of another anti-depressant taking care of the residual symptoms of yet another anti-depressant."
 
If you read the entire article I quoted, you will see how apologetic Dr. DeRubeis sounds about his findings. All he is saying is that if you feel depressed, it makes sense to discuss this with somebody instead of guzzling crippling chemicals. To the public zombified by the endless ati-depressant commercials the scientist's message might come as a huge surprise. Still, I'm glad that finally somebody dared to publish findings that are likely to cut into the huge profits by the nasty pharmaceutical companies.

by Amanda Marcotte

Okay, color me amused.  There was a time when the standard feminist response to new evidence demonstrating that the G spot doesn’t exist---at least in the sense of being a real spot that has a specific sensitivity, like the clitoris---would have been to say, “Of course.  The G spot was invented in response to feminist skepticism about the ‘maturity’ of the vaginal orgasm over the clitoral one, to justify men who didn’t want to engage in stimulation outside of the pump and dump.” Which is why I was amused to see Mary Elizabeth Williams at Broadsheet get ruffled about a new study, involving twins, that demonstrated that the genetic arguments for the existence of a G spot have produced nada.  I will say that some of the statements from the researchers incline me to worry about their objectivity---they are very committed to the idea that the subjective experience that could all be in your head is not “real” somehow, and they have strong opinions on the injustice of G-spot pressure---but hey, I’m willing to believe that there’s no G spot if that’s what the research finally concludes, after multiple, rigorous studies of course. 

Feminist willingness to entertain the reality of the G spot is definitely an innovation of the past couple of decades, and it’s for good reasons.  One reason is that a lot of women stimulate this part of their vaginas while masturbating, and also that many lesbian-identified women report G-spot orgasms.  This would incline one to think that there’s an explanation for reporting of this beyond just men wanting to believe and women needing/wanting to please men.  But I think the overwhelming reason is that the desire to believe women when they report subjective experiences is ascendant, while willingness to believe that women might trick themselves into believing something because it’s what men want to hear is descendant in feminist thought right now.  Women say they have G spot orgasms, we believe women, end of story.  I respect where this desire comes from.  Being a woman, I’m well aware of how much your ability to perceive objective reality is dismissed under the rubric that bitches are crazy.  Especially when it comes to biology, there’s a long-standing, ongoing problem of women’s experiences being dismissed as being “all in their head”, particularly when you’re talking about issues such as chronic pain.  Dismissals of the G spot can and often do come from that urge to believe that women are especially stupid and out of touch and probably mental. (To be fair, many feminists still are skeptical of the G spot, because so many defenses of it come from those trying to guilt women about desiring clitoral stimulation.) The other reason many feminists have moved into the pro G spot camp is because the amount of work it takes to produce that kind of orgasm puts mere 20 minutes bouts of cunnilingus to shame, and so you can’t really say devotees of it are doing so because it appeals to male laziness.

But what this struggle ends up doing is obscuring that there’s a third possibility, one that neither G spot defenders or dismissers seem willing to entertain, which is that the women’s experiences can be totally real and also that there’s no such thing as the G-spot. I mean, it’s not like it’s behind your ears or something; it’s right by the clit, and inside the vagina, which is no slouch in the sensitivity department.  Considering that some women can orgasm with very little stimulation or often just by willing themselves to come hands-free---and that both men and women are capable of orgasming in their sleep without masturbation---then it’s certainly well within the range of possibility that women who get the specific G spot stimulation can have an orgasm without there actually being a specific G spot. 

I suppose I see why this possibility (which I’m not married to or anything, just suggesting is a likely possibility) bothers people, and it’s for the same reason that the placebo effect is unnerving.  There’s still a shame attached to the idea that something is “all in your head”, as if that makes it less real.  But if you think about it, it doesn’t, because all experience happens subjectively.  And by all, I mean all---the most extreme example is that you can’t hurt a corpse by shooting it, but there are other ones as well.  Pain feels very different depending on context, and it’s been said that hangovers feel worse if you did something stupid while drunk.  Our tendency is to want to say this experience is less real than that because our brains are constantly recalibrating how we feel something, but it’s all equally real.  If someone is more likely to have a G spot orgasm because she believes in the G spot, then that doesn’t mean her orgasm was one teeny bit less real. 

More power to ‘em, I say. For those of us whose experiments with the G spot have resulted in skepticism and annoyance, there’s a strong desire to believe that we’re all being hoodwinked by the Sex Police that want all women to perform like porn stars, i.e. getting off in visually exciting ways that are completely penis-centered.  (With “Deep Throat” winning an all-time award for wishing women had clitorises in their throats.) But intellectually, this desire is stifled by the amusement of watching someone make the “come here” motion inside a vagina until he’s about to pass out from boredom while you’re wondering if you’re broken or something.  It’s interesting to consider if the G spot only occurs in some women, which would explain the huge gap between experiences without further shaming of women who don’t have G spot orgasms.  But what this research indicates is that if this is true, then it isn’t genetic.  I’m personally quite comfortable with the possibility that the G spot “exists” only in women that find the process of stimulating it exciting instead of boring, but of course, that kind of thing is culturally difficult to swallow.

The problem is that if the difference between having a G spot and not having one is suggestibility to the possibility---i.e. that you have orgasms by stimulating a specific part of your body when other women don’t, because you believe that you can---then the shame would transfer from those who don’t to those who do, who would be falsely led to believe that it’s all in their heads and they’re crazy or something.  This is due to the aforementioned weirdness people have about believing that what’s in your head is real, plus an giant dose of sexism.  It’s really too bad, because I think people are coming around to accepting that what is in someone’s head is extremely important to the final result of orgasm, and that this can vary wildly.  If this dude is excited by lingerie, but that dude prefers plain nudity, no one would claim that one of them had an orgasm that wasn’t “real”.  But then again, they’re both dudes, so that’s the problem. When it comes to women, we want the body below the neck to be everything; the possibility that what’s in your head is the most important thing of all is unnerving.  Part of it is that society isn’t quite up to the task of taking women’s brains as seriously as they do men’s brains.  But part of it is that “it’s all in your head” is used to dismiss the reality of women’s experiences, even though something that happens in your head is quite real.

Maybe one day someone will conduct a responsible, objective, controlled study and get to the bottom of this.  Ironically, this might actually go a long way to getting around the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” dilemma that creates all this angst, because the odds are very high that a responsible, well-researched theory will end up validating both those with and those withouts’ real experiences.

Dr. Super is loving this.

Usually reserved for the most obese people, weight-loss surgery is unlikely to be a last-ditch option much longer. Technological advancements are turning it into a one-hour, incisionless procedure -- making it more attractive to moderately overweight adults [...]; overweight and obese teenagers; and normal-weight people with difficult-to-control diabetes. Several new procedures are already in human clinical trials.

I think we're all getting a little carried away and assuming that just because a procedure is easy to accomplish, its effects are also easy to live with after the fact. As many have discovered, and as this same article notes, even though the already low morbidity rates for this type of procedure continue to decline and operation recovery times become shorter, patients still have to contend with medium- to long-term problems, including "nutritional deficiencies, diarrhea, regurgitation and bowel obstructions."

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 19% of patients experience dumping syndrome, which is involuntary vomiting or defecation. Complication rates involving ulcers, wound problems, hemorrhage, deep-vein thrombosis, heart attacks and strokes range from 2.4% to 0.1%.

And where do we draw the line regarding preemptive surgery? One surgeon notes that "[p]eople 50 pounds overweight are the ones we should treat, before the problem gets worse," but isn't that number quite arbitrary? Unless we ascertain that at 50 lbs overweight (as opposed to 40 or 30), people start to see marked deteriorations in their overall health (in fact, we've been told that every 10 lbs packs its own share of doom), then the benchmark at which surgery becomes an option can arguably continue to shift downwards.

I suppose weight-loss surgery is now poised to enter the realm of cosmetic procedures, where if people opt to risk their lives and health in order to try and feel better about themselves, then they have that right. The rub lies in the fact that most elective cosmetic surgery is not covered by the majority of insurance plans or universal health care systems. And so it will be interesting to see - especially in the context of the raging US health care debate - how this particular argument evolves.