By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Horseless carriages of the 1820s.
-Illustrations from the The Soviet Hobbit.
-The history of the prisoner’s “last meal.”
-The 8 types of drunken women, circa 1795.
-Victorian teacups with built-in mustache guards.
Tits aren’t News – The Power of the Online Campaign
By Helen McBride
Last week I spoke at an event for Youth Action Northern Ireland, an organization that strives to make a significant difference in the lives of young people in Northern Ireland. One of the ways they carry out this mission is through their Gender Equality Unit, working “with those young women who are most excluded from resources and society to try to improve their access.” Part of this work is informed by the desire to challenge “traditional expectations of young women,” particularly those which deny their potential and their opportunities.
We Need a Robin Hood Tax for Welfare Relief
By Austin C. McCoy
I wish I found the idea of cutting $39 billion from the federal government’s food stamp program (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP) during a recession unbelievable. But, as usual, House Republicans continue to thwart all belief and reason. Some Republicans like Paul Ryan (R-WI) are concerned about the program’s sustainability. They worry that the size of the program will not shrink fast enough over the next four years. However, as Travis Waldron of Think Progress notes, SNAP is based upon income and not employment, therefore explaining the program’s projected marginal decrease.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Vintage kitchen kitsch.
-Cary Grant, Esther Williams, and LSD.
-Is this over-the-counter drug deadly?
-The man who brewed beer in his gut.
-The first African American flight attendants.
-Why do we still use 300-year-old fertility statistics?
My Miscarriage (Is Not Your Miscarriage)
By Carrie Pitzulo
Recently, Marjorie Ingall, writing for the Tablet, discusses the complicated – but sometimes very simple – feelings women have about their abortions or miscarriages. In “My Abortion, My Miscarriage, and My Right To Have My Own Feelings,” Ingall presents a sensitive, levelheaded rendering of her own spectrum of reproductive experiences. She describes the relief she felt at terminating a pregnancy in her youth, and the overwhelming sadness she felt at a later miscarriage, before having two healthy children. Ingall points out the lack of cultural acceptance of women’s wide variety of feelings about their own lives: “No matter what we feel—sadness at a miscarriage, relief at an abortion—women are told their feelings aren’t legitimate. Someone—a politician, a friend, a member of the clergy—invariably tells us to buck up if we’re devastated by the loss of a wanted pregnancy, and/or to hate ourselves if we’re not devastated to end an unwanted one.”
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-A fun history of yard sales.
-Sartre, Camus, and the FBI.
-Color photos of Cairo in 1910.
-Mormon-themed aphrodisiacs.
-Manly slang from the 19th century.
-Chasing the White House Cézanne’s
Wendy Davis Filibuster Shows You Don’t Mess with Texas Feminists
By Heather Munro Prescott
Periodically, we Yankees need a reminder that the term “southern feminist” is not an oxymoron. This past summer, we received an especially vivid one: Senator Wendy Davis’s epic filibuster of SB-5, which sought to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, to regulate first-trimester abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers, and to restrict access to medication abortions.
Reflections: A Conference on Children and “Imperfection”
By Adam Turner
Over the past weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in the Centre for Medical Humanities Imperfect Children conference at the University of Leicester. The conference included a wonderful mix of disciplines and both historical and present-day perspectives on the concept of “imperfection” and children. This usefully provocative focus led to an ongoing discussion during the two-day meeting about the definition of imperfection and how it relates to concepts like normality, health, and ability.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-A 16th-century nose job.
-17 of the world’s oldest films.
-The art of the 1950s motel postcard.
-The Reformation according to LEGO.
-20 beautiful color photos of Tsarist Russians.
-J.D. Salinger and the case of the missing testicle?
This is the Culture of Sexual Violence
There are two family pictures in a box of photographs that are the only few I have of my father and me. My mother always told me my father doted on me and I was definitely becoming “daddy’s little girl.” Yet, the images of a seemingly happy family are overshadowed by the knowledge that at the time these two pictures were taken, my father had or was raping his stepdaughter: my teenage sister.
