Did you know?
White American males constitute only 33% of the population. Yet, they occupy approximately:
- 80% of tenured positions in higher education
- 80% of the House of Representatives
- 80-85% of the U.S. Senate
- 92%of Forbes 400 executive CEO-level positions
- 90% of athletic team owners
- 97.7% of U.S. presidents
(via exhale-dust)
- The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.
- It is scientifically nonsensical.
- It is physiologically wrong.
- It gets the logic wrong
- It’s bad statistics.
- It is lying by scientific authority.
- It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.
- It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.
- Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don’t feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.
- It embarrasses the U.S.
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
Blame the flower children. That seems to be the chief conclusion of a new report about the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. The study, undertaken by John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the request of America’s Catholic bishops, links the spike in child abuse by priests in the 1960s and ’70s to “the importance given to young people and popular culture” — along with the emergence of the feminist movement, a “singles culture” and a growing acceptance of homosexuality. It also cites crime, drugs, an increase in premarital sexual behavior and divorce.
The problem with this conclusion isn’t that it absolves molesting priests of responsibility. Even the study’s authors wouldn’t go that far. Rather, the flaw with the theory is that it’s unsupported by any data or evidence. It thus detracts from the report’s other findings, which are based on empirical research. Indeed, aside from its implausible indictment of the ’60s counterculture, the report is an enlightening analysis of an abominable chapter in the Roman Catholic Church’s history.
— Catholic Church: Report indicts ’60s counterculture in Catholic abuse cases - latimes.com
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
“It was a very broad and deep recession for everybody,” said Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, but “where the cuts have affected women more than men is in state and local government.”
So far this year state and local governments have cut 86,000 jobs. By contrast, the private sector has added 854,000 jobs.
— Jobs Recovery Has Yet to Reach Women - WSJ.com
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
Cat, Roadmaps of Consent (Adventures in Pleasure)
So important: Any time. Any reason.
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
Shakesville: Feminism 101: Helpful Hints for Dudes, Part 3
read it. share it.
(via sexisbeautiful)
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
The Great Wall of Vagina
Changing female body perception around the world through art - that’s the idea behind this amazing exhibition currently to be seen in Brighton, UK.British artist Jamie McCartney has created a monumental wall sculpture showing women’s most private parts. The 9 metre long polyptych consists of four hundred plaster casts of vulvas, all of them unique, arranged into ten large panels. The age range of the women is from 18 to 76 including mothers and daughters, identical twins, transgendered men and women as well as a woman pre and post natal and another one pre and post labiaplasty. Described as “the Vagina Monologues of sculpture” this piece is intended to change the lives of women for good: “I realised that many women suffer anxiety about their genitals and I was in a unique position to do something about that.” Half a decade since its humble beginnings, the exhibtion is still a success. “If this sculpture helps just one woman decide not to proceed with unnecessary plastic surgery on their genitals then it will have succeeded.”
(via allthechocolatesinthebox)
The US House of Representatives voted on Friday to overturn “net neutrality” rules aimed at ensuring an open Internet, setting the stage for a clash with the Senate and President Barack Obama.
In an attempt to encourage more research into the health and well-being of gay people, a California demographer has estimated that more than 9 million Americans are gay, lesbian or bisexual - a number equivalent to the population of New Jersey.
Famous Bisexual:
Alice Walker (born in 1944)
- Self-described herself as “a Renegade, an Outlaw, a Pagan,” Alice has written dozens of novels, short stories, non-fiction and poetry.
- Was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple, which was later adapted into a film (with Whoopi Goldberg) and was nominated for an Oscar and won a Tony award.
- At the young age at 8, her brother shot her in her right eye while playing ‘cowboys and Indian’ and she lost her sight in that eye, causing her to be ostracized by the other children – which she attributes to her self-identification as an outsider, until she had surgery at 14 to remove the scar-tissue and place an imitation eye in its place.
- 1960s: After meeting with Martin Luther King Jr, she fought for her civil rights in Mississippi, even marching in the 1963 March on Washington. After the US Supreme court overturned the anti-miscegenation laws, Walker and Leventhal became the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi (they divorced 9 year laters)
- 1990s: Had a love affair with Tracy Chapmen, describing it as “delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and was completely in love with her but it was not anybody’s business but ours.”
- 2000s: Was arrested during an anti-war protest the night before the Iraq War
“I was with other women who believe that the women and children of Iraq are just as dear as the women and children in our families, and that, in fact, we are one family. And so it would have felt to me that we were going over to actually bomb ourselves.”
“I encountered ‘Everything that rises must converge’ while reading Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite writers from the American South. It is the title of one of her books. She was quoting Teilhard de Chardin, a Catholic priest.
In my own life this expression has rung quite true, though the meaning I make of it may be different than theirs. Everything I have ever worked for, rising regardless of circumstances to do my best, has led eventually to the lives of other people who are also rising – sometimes against even greater odds than mine. Embracing this reality removes fear of striking out and upward.
Everyone you truly wish to encounter will be there when you arrive (you will realize you have been rising together though on separate continents, perhaps, or even during separate centuries!) or will appear shortly thereafter. There is much joy and celebration whenever we converge, i.e. meet each other. The spirits we knew. The faces we did not. Usually.
~Alice WalkerHer daughter is a less-famous bisexual.
