The NationStates Feminism Thread IV: Fight Like A Girl!

[Giovenith]

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♛
Further Reading

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What is Feminism?
Feminist theory
Feminist philosophy
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History of Feminism
History of Feminism
"History of Feminism"
The Cynical Historian
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Types of Feminism

Feminist movements and ideologies

Amazon feminism
Analytical feminism
Anarcha-feminism
Atheist feminism
Black Feminism
Chicana feminism
Christian feminism
Conservative feminism
Cultural feminism
Cyber feminism
Difference feminism
Ecofeminism
Equity and Gender Feminism
Fat feminism
French feminism
Global feminism
Hip-hop feminism
Individualist feminism
Islamic feminism
Jewish feminism
Lesbian feminism
Lipstick feminism
Liberal feminism
Material feminism
Marxist feminism
Mormon feminism
Networked feminism
Neofeminism
New feminism
Postcolonial feminism
Postmodern feminism
Post-structural feminism
Pro-feminism
Pro-life feminism
Radical feminism
Separatist feminism
Sex-positive feminism
Sikh feminism
Socialist feminism
Standpoint feminism
State feminism
Structuralist feminism
Third Wave Feminism
Transfeminism
Transnational feminism

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Books

Books and texts that explore varying
perspective on both men and women's issues.
By no means a complete list, but a good place
to start.

"The Big Book of Feminism: Big Ideas Simply Explained"
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"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" Mary Wollstonecraft
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"The Second Sex" Simone de Beauvoir
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"The Feminine Mystique" Betty Friedan
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"Sexual Politics" Kate Millett
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"Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of
Women in Society" Dorothy L. Sayers
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"The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young
Women" Jessica Valenti
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"The Myth of Male Power" Warren Farrell
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"Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes
Sense of Our Political Divide" Dr. Hector A. Garcia
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"The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different
Languages?" Deborah Cameron
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"Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" Dr. Mary Phipher
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"Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant To The New Millennium?" Rosalind Coward
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"The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory" Cynthia Eller
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"Gentlemen and Amazons" Cynthia Eller (sequel to above)
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"Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger" Soraya Chemaly
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"Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith—and for Freedom" Karen Garst
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"Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" Sheryl Sandberg
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"Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office" Lois P. Frankel
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"Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and
Controlling Men" Lundy Bancroft
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"Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence" Philip W. Cook
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"Woman-to-Woman Sexual Violence: Does She Call It Rape?" Lori B. Girshick
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"The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating
the Myth from the Medicine" Dr. Jennifer Gunter

Old threads:
The NationStates Feminist Thread
The NationStates Feminist Thread II
The NationStates Feminist Thread III
The NS Mens Rights Thread

Sidebar is a work in progress.
Suggestions for resources welcome.

Hi there, everybody!

Welcome to the fourth iteration of the NationStates feminism megathread.

Here is where you will find all manner of topics relating to feminism and the issues it concerns itself with.

Discussion of men's rights is also welcome. There used to be a thread specifically for men's rights, but it was rarely used as most relevant talks took place in the feminism thread. So please, feel free to bring those conversations here too — apologies if this is not ideal for some.

This thread is always a work in progress to provide the best resources for those interested in gender rights of all sorts. Please, feel free to suggest books, websites, articles, and documentaries that you feel give insight to be linked and organized in the OP.


What is Feminism?

Defining feminism has always been a tricky topic. While the concept of women's rights has been around since the beginning of human history (if not always reaching the heights we'd prefer today), the term "feminism" itself is relatively new, and there is some debate as to where women's rights in general and feminism proper meet.

From Wikipedia:

"Charles Fourier, a utopian socialist and French philosopher, is credited with having coined the word "féminisme" in 1837. The words "féminisme" ("feminism") and "féministe" ("feminist") first appeared in France and the Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1852 as the year of the first appearance of "feminist" and 1895 for "feminism". Depending on the historical moment, culture and country, feminists around the world have had different causes and goals. Most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves. Other historians assert that the term should be limited to the modern feminist movement and its descendants. Those historians use the label "protofeminist" to describe earlier movements."

Many people are fond of the tongue-in-cheek definition that feminism is "the radical notion that women are people," but more seriously, feminism is traditionally defined as the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. While this might seem straight forward at first, debate flares among the feminist community about exactly what it means to be "equal," how that is achieved, where gender-based oppression comes from, and who should be responsible for what in the cause. Such debate topics can include:

• Does equality mean that men and women will usually wind up doing the same things, or does it mean that they will do different things but that those things will be equally valued?
  
• What sorts of roles, activities, and expectations empower women, and which hold them back?
  
• Can certain enterprises like religion, atheism, capitalism, socialism, technology, ecology, conservatism, liberalism, etc. aid in women's rights, or are they part of the problem?
  
• How much should feminism combine with other forms of advocacy, such as the LGBT+ movement or racial equality?
  
• Are men oppressed alongside women, or are men the oppressors of women?
  
• Should feminism encompass men's issues too, or should it focus on women while men have their own branch of gender equality advocacy? Do men even need advocacy at all?

Many people throughout the history of feminism and women's rights circles have had different answers to these questions. Often the first thing that a young feminist will be surprised by when getting into discourse is how her/his/their own answers are not considered as "obvious" as they initially believed. History, sociology, psychology, economics, and philosophy all provide avenues to addressing them, and this thread serves as a center to do so.

Feminism has many subsets, a few of which are listed in the sidebar under "Types of Feminism."

Who is a feminist?

Whoever says they are.

There's a lot of grandstanding in the conversation about feminism, a lot of declarations about who is and is not "really" a feminist based largely on self-proclaimed authority. You're not a real feminist if you think this, you're not a real feminist if you don't think that, men can't be feminists just feminist allies, feminist is a title that has to be earned, etc., etc., etc.

While that debate is welcome here (within reason), the fact is that there is no Queen of Feminism or Feminist Police or Official Feminist Bible who has the power to decide those things once and for all. Despite what (self-admittedly) many feminists like to imagine, feminism has been diverse and complicated from the start, there was never this mythic time where those involved in it were all in agreement about what it meant to be a feminist and who qualified as such. Even the suffragettes had strong disagreements with each other about women's role in society and the best angle for achieving suffrage — Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously conflicted with Victoria Woodhull. Feminism is just a branch of philosophy like any other, it is free to be interpreted and transformed to evolving values, needs, factors, and agendas. As ever, No True Scotsman (Scotswoman?) looms in judgment of those who think that they hold the invisible guidebook for determining True Feministhood™.

Quotes to set the tone...

“ I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less.

— Susan B. Anthony

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

“Misogyny or misandry is not a status or a belief; it is just a sickness.

― M.F. Moonzajer

“In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

“All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.

— Virginia Woolf

“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.

— Virginia Woolf

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

— Abigail Adams

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

— Martin Luther King Jr

“I am a men's liberationist (or "masculist") when men's liberation is defined as equal opportunity and equal responsibility for both sexes. I am a feminist when feminism favors equal opportunities and responsibilities for both sexes. I oppose both movements when either says our sex is THE oppressed sex, therefore, "we deserve rights." That's not gender liberation but gender entitlement. Ultimately, I am in favor of neither a women's movement nor a men's movement but a gender transition movement.

— Warren Farrell

“I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.

— Victoria Woodhull

“ Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

— George Carlin

Women's Resources

Courtesy of The Joyful Heart Foundation.

International Women's Day is March 8th! Save the date!

Women's Rights Agencies, Groups and Organizations

Feminist Majority Foundation
American Association of University Women
American Medical Women's Association
Association of Libertarian Feminists
Association for Women in Communications
The Center for Women's Business Research
Equal Rights Advocates
Financial Women's Association
Girls Incorporated
League of Women Voters (US)
London Feminist Network
National Association for Female Executives
National Association of Women Business Owners
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Negro Women
National Federation of Democratic Women
National Federation of Republican Women
National Organization for Women
National Women's Business Council
UK Feminista
Turkish Republican People's Party, CHP Women's Branch
Women Impacting Public Policy
Women in Technology International
Womens Sports Foundation
Zonta International

Women's Health, Victim Assistance, Support

Abusive Red Flags
Breast Cancer Awareness and Support
Domestic Abuse - Victim Support (UK)
Domestic Shelters - location service
National Ovarian Cancer Coalition
The Joyful Heart Foundation
RAINN (RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline in the US - 800.656.HOPE)
Unchained At Last - Assistance in escaping forced/child marriage, focuses on Americans (while generally focused on women, assistance is open to all people regardless of gender identity)
Tahirih Justice Center - Assistance in escaping forced/child marriage, focuses on immigrants
Single Mother Help

Blogs

A Mighty Girl
Everyday Feminism
Love, Joy, Feminism

Journals and Books

European Journal of Women's Studies
Feminist Press
Psychology of Women Quarterly
Women's Studies Quarterly

Men's Resources

Courtesy of The Joyful Heart Foundation.

International Men's Day is November 19th! Save the date!

Important note: "A Voice For Men" is an illegal link on NationStates due to their involvement in doxxing. Do not link anything from them on this thread or anywhere else.

Men's Rights Organizations, Agencies, Misc

All India Men's Welfare Association
American Journal of Men's Health | SAGE Journals
American Men's Studies Association
Canadian Association for Equality
The Good Men Project
National Center for Men
National Coalition for Men
Wiki: Men's Rights Movement

Support and discussion (pro-man without being anti-woman):

r/bropill
r/MensLib

Men's Health, Victim Assistance, Suicide Prevention

Dads in Distress (AU)
Domestic Abuse - Victim Support (UK)
The Joyful Heart Foundation
Mankind Initiative (UK)
Men's Health Network
No-Shave November
Pandora's Project
RAINN (RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline in the US - 800.656.HOPE)
Unchained At Last - Assistance in escaping forced/child marriage, focuses on Americans (while generally focused on women, assistance is open to all people regardless of gender identity)
Survivors UK
Us Too - International Prostate Cancer Education & Support Network

Parenting Support

American Coalition for Fathers and Children
Dads Divorce
National Fatherhood Initiative
Rights of Unmarried Fathers (US)
Only Dads
Wiki: Fathers' Rights Movement
Wiki: Father's Rights Movement by Country

Because men's rights isn't as popular as women's rights, unfortunately, many people aren't sure where to begin when researching the topic. The original Men's Rights thread provided these links:

• Recommended reading provided by Ostro. This summarises a number of the issues, some of which are repeated below. If you wish to read only one resource on the issues men face, this is a good choice.
• Mens Rights Subreddit
• Online abuse is not limited by gender: The Guardian
• Politifact on the 77% wage gap - mostly false
• References examining assults by women on their spouses or male partners: an annotated bibliography: Martin S. Fiebert: Department of Psychology: California State University, Long Beach
• Gender disparity in federal criminal cases: University of Michigan
• Recognizing Gender Based Violence Against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations: R Charli Carpenter: Drake University: Department of Politics and International Relations: Des Moines, IA
• Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men: A Multilevel, Multinational Study of University Students: Denise A. Hines: Received: 29 September 2005 / Revised: 12 June 2006 / Accepted: 3 September 2006 / Published online: 27 February 2007: Springer Science - "Results showed that ... the greater the status of women, the higher the level of forced sex against men."
• Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship: By Christina Hoff Sommers: Chronicle of Higher Education
• The silenced minority: It’s important to remember men can be victims of domestic abuse, too.: Minnesota Daily Op-Ed
• Feminism Isn't For Men Too - In Fact, It's Not For Women Either: huffingtonpost.co.uk Op-Ed
• One in Three U.S. Teens Experience Dating Violence, Girls More Likely to Get Physical
• I Was Raised To Hate Men And Now I Don’t Know What To Think About Feminism, Jennifer Levin, Jul 31, 2013
• Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2008-09 - "Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual misconduct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female."
• Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men:A Multilevel, Multinational Study of University Students
• News facts: Trafficking of Adult men : European Network Against Human Trafficking
• More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals
• 9 Signs We Have a “Boy Crisis”: collegestats.org
• How to Make School Better for Boys: Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding: theatlantic.com
• Men: A growing minority? Women earning doctoral degrees in psychology outnumber men three to one. What does this mean for the future of the field - American Psychology Association
• Yes, There’s a War on Boys in Schools: By Caroline Kitchens: National Review

If you're new here, before you post...

Since this seems to be one of the first places that people new to the site like to visit (likely because of how common strong opinions about feminism are across the rest of the internet), I feel the need to go into a bit more detail about what is expected here that veteran players shouldn't need to be told. If you are new, please make sure that you have read The One Stop Rules Shop before posting on the forums.

"A feminism thread? My time to shine! Feminism is cancer! Come at me, SJWs!"

No.

If I had a nickel for every person who walked into this thread expecting to be the first person here to stand in opposition to a den of rabid "SJW" stereotypes, I'd have a fortune to rival that of the nickels obtained from people complaining about the swastika flag restrictions. It's neither clever nor unique. You are not the first person here to be critical of feminism, you will not be the last, you will almost certainly not be the most memorable.

Also, keep in mind that calling anyone "cancer" or other such colorful memetics (ex, "get back in the kitchen lol!" trolling) will get you disciplined by the Moderators (free speech doesn't exist on this website — yes, we know it's tyrannical, no, we don't care) — this isn't Reddit or the YouTube comment section. Go back to there if you want virtual high-fives for unimaginative "pwning." While on NationStates, you abide by our rules.

And try actually listening to people you disagree with, for once. You might learn something.

"Why are non-feminists allowed here? This is supposed to be a thread for promoting feminism!"

This is a thread for topics about feminism, not solely for feminists. Said topics will include those that are critical of feminism. Obviously feminists are more than welcome here, but this is not an exclusive circle for them. This is a debate thread, not a sanctuary. Keep in mind that not everyone who brands themselves as "anti-feminist" intends that label to mean an opposition to gender equality itself, but rather what they see as the poor handling of gender equality by the individuals who label themselves as the feminist movement. You are free to disagree with that position, but understand that it is a position that people take, and try to keep it in mind in order to debate in good faith.

Similarly to the above warning, just like this is not Reddit or the YouTube comments section, this is not Tumblr, BuzzFeed, or Jezebel either. On this website we are interested in debate and conversation, not in "gotcha!" zingers designed to snappily put critics of feminism in their place while the rest of us go, "You tell 'em, girl!" You're not going to be the next big "best, response, EVER!!" screenshot that gets shared around social justice media, and the whole super sassy, "proud bitch," yawning-and-waving-hand-dismissively-at-the-manbabies routine was already old by thread one — not even the other feminists are impressed by it, and absolutely no one is flustered by it.

You are also not held to any different standard than your opponents. "But I was saying it to a misogynist/alt-right/Nazi/bad guy! Saying bad things to them is a good thing! Come on, this is [current year] for crying out loud!" is not an acceptable excuse for breaking the rules. "Ironic" misandry such as "kill all men" is definitely not welcome. Several a social justice-oriented newbie has been banned in the past for mistakenly thinking that that sort of logic would hold here. There is no "punching up" exception on NationStates — keep your hands to yourself, period.

And try actually listening to people you disagree with, for once. You might learn something.


Thanks to Swith Witherward for running the last three threads, and doing most of the work of compiling these links. Also thanks to Hirota for the original Men's Rights thread and its links, as well as anyone else who as contributed to the gathering and organization of this OP.
Note to OP: Headliner font permalink.

[Giovenith]

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Come here to see a changing variety of topics related to feminism, women's rights, and gender abolition in general. Suggestions welcome.
~♡~

"Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian author, physician and feminist activist, dies at 89"

When her grandmother told her that “girls are a blight,” a young Nawal El Saadawi stamped her foot, furious that a member of her own family would believe “a boy is worth 15 girls at least.” Around the same time, as a 10-year-old in Egypt, she successfully rebelled when her parents tried to marry her, blackening her teeth and pouring coffee on a suitor.

Dr. El Saadawi ultimately graduated from high school at the top of her class, won a scholarship to study medicine and rose to become Egypt’s public health director, all while immersing herself in Marxist politics and feminist thought. In 1972, she lost her job at the Health Ministry after publishing the nonfiction book “Women and Sex,” which linked violence against women’s bodies with political and economic oppression.

Defying taboos, Dr. El Saadawi wrote about rape, sexual abuse, the fixation on women’s virginity and the ritual of female genital mutilation, a common practice in parts of Africa and the Middle East. At age 6, she recalled in her later book “The Hidden Face of Eve,” she had been plucked from her bed in the middle of the night and carried to the bathroom, where her genitals were slashed as she wept and called for help.

Opening her eyes, she was stunned to see her mother standing nearby, smiling among the strangers who had wounded her with a knife. As she watched her sister being dragged into the same bathroom, Dr. El Saadawi wrote, she was struck by a revelation: “We were born of a special sex, the female sex. We are destined in advance to taste of misery, and to have a part of our body torn away by cold, unfeeling cruel hands.”

Dr. El Saadawi, who died March 21 at 89 at a hospital in Cairo, spent decades championing women’s equality, emerging as one of the Arab world’s foremost feminists while publishing more than 50 novels, story collections, plays and nonfiction books. She continued writing in the face of censorship, death threats from Muslim extremists and — after being jailed in September 1981 for “crimes against the state” — imprisonment.

Using an eyeliner pencil that a fellow prisoner smuggled behind bars, she scrawled her memoirs on a roll of toilet paper. With another forbidden luxury, a transistor radio, she listened one night in October to reports that President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated, paving the way for her release weeks later under his successor, Hosni Mubarak.

“If you imagine Margaret Sanger in Brooklyn in 1916 — her birth control clinic smashed by the police, her books and pamphlets confiscated, herself dragged off and held for trial on charges of immorality — you have something of the position of Nawal El Saadawi today in Egypt,” author Vivian Gornick wrote in 1982, reviewing “The Hidden Face of Eve” for the New York Times.

Dr. El Saadawi’s death was confirmed by her friend Menna Elabiad, an Egyptian journalist. She said Dr. El Saadawi had difficulty swallowing food and had been recovering from a fall.

In a 2018 interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News, Dr. El Saadawi spoke of liberating women “economically, socially, psychologically, physically, religiously” — not just in Egypt, but across the planet. “Feminism was not invented by American women, as many people think,” she added. “No, feminism is embedded in the culture, and in the struggle of all women all over the world.”

Dr. El Saadawi condemned the double standard in which women were supposed to be chaste while men were expected to be promiscuous, with multiple wives permitted under Islamic law. Angering some feminists, she urged women not to wear makeup — which she considered another way in which they were reduced to “sex objects” — and campaigned against the hijab and other head coverings for Muslim women.

She also proudly declared that she was “not really fit for the role of a wife,” noting that she had divorced three men: the first, in her telling, after he turned to drugs and tried to kill her; the second after he became too “patriarchal”; and the third after he cheated on her.

British writer and publisher Kadija Sesay, who acted as her agent in the West, recalled that Dr. El Saadawi extended her fight for equality even to the dining room, where she believed that no one should sit at the head of a table, and to the lecture hall, where she sometimes invited audience members to join her on the stage to ask questions.

“She did not believe she was above anyone else,” Sesay said by email, “but neither was anyone above her.”

The second of nine children, Nawal El Saadawi was born in Kafr Tahla, a village outside Cairo, on Oct. 27, 1931. She later told Britain’s Observer newspaper that she had been lucky to have been born a girl: “It was a handicap that pushed me.” Her father was a government education official, her mother a homemaker.

Dr. El Saadawi received a medical degree from Cairo University in 1955, specializing in psychiatry, and returned to her village to work as a doctor, often treating the damage from female genital mutilation. The procedure was criminalized by a 2008 law, although she later said it would take years to eradicate the practice.

In 1966 she earned a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. She later practiced psychiatry and worked for the United Nations, including as director of a women’s training and research program in Ethiopia. Mainly she focused on her writing, publishing novels including “Woman at Point Zero” (1975), about a prostitute who was sentenced to death for killing her pimp.

“Her central themes revolved around the trinity of creativity, dissidence and revolution,” said Omnia Amin, who translated some of her books into English. “All three fed into one another as creativity involves dissidence and dissidence leads to revolution. This made all her books revolve around the need to remove the blindfolds placed around the mind.”

After receiving death threats for her critiques of Islam, Dr. El Saadawi went into exile in the United States, lecturing at universities for several years before returning to Egypt in 1996. She faced persistent criticism for works including “God Resigns at the Summit Meeting,” a play in which God is questioned by Jews, Christians and Muslims; in her telling, police pressured her Arabic publishers to destroy the play.

Her marriages to Ahmed Helmi, Rashad Bey and Sherif Hetata, a former political prisoner who translated many of her books, ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage, writer Mona Helmy; a son from her third marriage, filmmaker Atef Hetata; and a grandson.

Dr. El Saadawi briefly ran for president in 2005, ending her campaign after she said she was prevented from holding public events or appearing on state radio or television. She later joined the 2011 protests at Tahrir Square in Cairo, which culminated with Mubarak’s resignation, and remained active in Egyptian politics into her 80s.

“I am becoming more radical with age,” she told the Guardian with a laugh, months before the protests began. “I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.”

"The Doctor & Public Health Pioneer Who Saved the Lives of 90,000 Children"

New York City. When Baker started her public health work, the impoverished slums of Hell's Kitchen on the city's West Side were among the most densely populated places on Earth, and epidemics killed an estimated 4,500 people each week in the overcrowded immigrant tenements, including 1,500 babies. With a third of children born there dying before their fifth birthday, Baker famously remarked that "It is six times safer to be a soldier in the trenches than a baby in the United States." Thanks to her initiatives, the death rate plummeted, and Baker became famous as doctor who had saved 90,000 children in New York City and countless others as her reforms were replicated across the United States and in other countries.

Baker was born in 1873 and grew up in a Quaker family in Poughkeepsie, New York. She studied medicine at the Women’s Medical College in Manhattan, the medical school run by Emily Blackwell, the sister of Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first female doctor. In 1908, with diseases such as measles, dysentery, typhoid, and diphtheria running rampant in the city's Lower East Side, Baker was put in charge of the Health Department’s newly formed Bureau of Child Hygiene, the first of its kind in the country. In this role, Baker approached public health in an innovative new way: rather than focusing on tracking down sick children, whose chances for survival were often slim in the age before antibiotics, she decided the new bureau would focus on education and prevention, including through smallpox vaccination campaigns and a variety of nutrition and hygiene educational programs.

Among her most successful initiatives, she sent nurses to visit all new mothers to teach them about proper infant care, including encouraging breastfeeding, regular bathing, and fresh air. She also set up a network of milk stations to provide clean, pasteurized milk to mothers who couldn't breastfeed, a much healthier alternative to the dirty water, contaminated milk, or beer otherwise fed to infants. Moreover, Baker convinced city officials to require that midwives have training and licenses, since many mothers and infants died each year during deliveries by untrained midwives.

Baker also tackled the persistent problem of infant blindness, which was caused by gonorrhea bacteria during birth. It was known at the time that administrating drops of silver nitrate to newborns' eyes could prevent blindness but the silver nitrate bottles often became contaminated or the concentration was too high and caused more damage. To address these problems, Baker designed new containers out of sterile beeswax that contained precise, single doses of silver nitrate. Within two years, infant blindness dropped from 300 babies per year to 3 per year.

These initiatives and others had an astounding impact on public health: within three years of launching her programs, the infant death rate in New York City dropped by 40% and, by the time she retired in 1923, the city had the lowest infant mortality rate of any large American city. Baker's impact also extended far beyond New York City. In 1912, she helped to support the launch of the Federal Children’s Bureau, now an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her programs were also replicated in many other cities and states, including a school health program that was copied in 35 states, and every state had established a bureau of children's health like New York's by the time of Baker's retirement.

As Baker became well-known both in the U.S. and overseas as a champion of public health, she was asked to teach a course on children's health at the New York University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College (now the New York University School of Medicine). She agreed with only one condition — the school, which at the time refused to admit female students, had to allow Baker and other women to enter the program as well. She graduated with a doctorate in public health in 1917 and continued to teach at the medical school for 15 years. Baker also became the first woman to serve on the Health Committee of the League of Nations, which she served on from 1922 to 1924.

Baker's writing helped to further spread her message of public health and the importance of caring for society's youngest members. She published more than 250 articles in the professional and popular press and wrote five books about maternal, infant, and child health. Her popular autobiography, Fighting For Life, described not only her work in New York City's Lower East Side, but also her activism for the Women's Suffrage Movement, her tour of Russia in the 1930s, and her adventures tracking down the infamous "Typhoid Mary." Baker died in 1945 at the age of 71 but her incredible legacy lives on today in public health programs across the world — and the millions of lives that they have saved.

"The women who are being forced to have virginity tests in the UK"

From behind the privacy curtain, a doctor is telling Sophia* to take off her knickers and trousers. She obliges while taking great shaking sobs. Trembling, she lies down and opens her legs. The doctor returns and begins looking for a thin membrane of crescent-shaped skin a few inches into Sophia’s vagina.

This isn’t how Sophia thought today would go. Her mum had promised a day of shopping and lunch on London’s Oxford street, providing a welcome respite from usual life with her stern parents. At 19, her parents still wouldn’t let Sophia go anywhere without their permission, demanding she come straight home from school and making plans for her to be married to someone of their choosing. “They would have gone mad if they knew I had a boyfriend,” she says. “They were talking about me getting married to a different guy, but his family wanted to make sure I was ‘pure’. They wanted proof I had never had sex.”

And so Sophia finds herself in a Harley Street clinic, as her mum explains the real purpose of their trip: she is booked in to have a “virginity test” in which a doctor will certify whether her hymen was still intact. Despite modern science disproving the myth that a woman’s hymen will remain whole until the first time she has sex, this sexist lore persists around the world. In some instances, women face danger - and in some cases, death - if her hymen doesn’t break, leaving blood on the sheets on her wedding night.

These tests might sound barbaric, but they are more common than you’d think. A 2017 study in the US showed 16% of obstetricians and gynaecologists surveyed had been asked to check for the hymen of a young women, with some begging their doctors to surgically construct a new one through a procedure called a hymenoplasty. Work is being done to end the practice, with the UN and WHO branding it “harmful” and “a violation of human rights”. France has outlawed virginity tests, with a fine of £14,000 for any medical professional found to be breaking the rules. But virginity testing remains legal and widely sought in at least 20 countries in all corners of the world, from the Middle East to North America.

On British soil, the frequency of testing is harder to track because many turn to private clinics, which are not required to publicly collate and share statistics. However, we do know virginity tests are not uncommon and remain legal as long as the recipient consents. For Sophia, saying no simply wasn’t an option. “I told my parents it was insulting, but if I didn’t do it, I would be kicked out. I had no money and nowhere to go,” she says.

The irony is, hymens have very little to do with a women’s chastity. Gynaecologist and author of HerHormones Paula Briggs tells me the fragile membrane of tissue changes during puberty. “Under the influence of the hormone oestrogen, the hymen becomes more like the trumpet of a daffodil. Although in some women tearing can occur with penetration, either with fingers or an erect penis, in some women the hymen will stretch to accommodate an erect penis, leaving no evidence of sexual activity.” It can break during a growth spurt, through masturbation or exercise. Three in every 100 women are born without one.

If science says hymens are nothing to worry about, why does the little piece of skin get so much airtime? I put the question to Neelam Heera, an activist and founder of Cysters, a space for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women to learn about sex and sexuality. “Virginity testing is a power trip,” she tells me over a Zoom call. “It’s barbaric. When we talk about virginity, it’s only ever women who are mentioned. Why? What about men? It’s a way to control a woman’s body and sexuality.”

What’s more, taking a broken hymen as the be-all and end-all of virginity forces women to find alternative ways to fulfil their sexual desires. Neelam tell me, “Growing up, I had friends who would have anal or oral sex to please their partners because they thought it meant they were still a virgin on their wedding night. I know this still happens today. It’s a really dangerous position to be in, where you're thinking about alternative ways to have sex to preserve something that doesn't exist and is actually engineered by patriarchy.”

But the biological mythology surrounding virginity is so powerful, fake hymens are in demand. Artificial Hymen Kits, which are nothing more than capsules containing fake blood, are sold for £43.99 on Amazon. Meanwhile many private British surgeons now offer hymenoplasties, stretching a new layer of skin across the vagina’s entrance to replicate a hymen. A report by The Sunday Times earlier this year revealed a least 22 private clinics in the UK were charging up to £3,000 for the surgery. In response, Matt Hancock vowed to tackle the “dreadful practice” by considering new laws and additional regulations to prevent clinics from “cashing in” by offering the procedure. But campaigners say this approach ignores the prevalence of misinformation around the female anatomy and will only drive the procedures underground.

Then in December, Conservative MP Richard Holden proposed an outright ban on virginity tests in parliament. The bill was due to return to the Commons on January 8, but the House did not sit on that day and records to not indicate whether an alternative future date has been set. Without government support, the bill might not get the chance to become law due to a lack of parliamentary time.

Women who are forced to undergo tests are often left understandably upset by the experience. When American rapper T.I. controversially admitted he takes his teenage daughter for an annual visit to the gynaecologist to “check her hymen” in 2019, he was met with a barrage of criticism online, labelled “coercive” and “creepy” by the press. He later said his intentions were "misconstrued and misconceived" and were said in a "very joking manner". But the young woman in question, 19-year-old Deyjah, only recently opened up on the experience, admitting her dad’s comments and the ensuing uproar left her feeling “angry, hurt and embarrassed”. Today, Sophia says she feels the same about her own test. “I felt like I had been assaulted,” she says.

The longterm effects of the tests can be life-altering. Cassandra Corrado recalls being subjected to an inadvertent virginity test during a routine pelvic exam when she was 16. “He asked if I was still closed,” she tells me over Zoom. “I had been having sex with my boyfriend for months, and my mum was in the room. Luckily, the assistant lied and said yes.” The incident has haunted Cassandra for decades. “I never went back to that doctor for a pelvic exam again,” she says. “Even today I get anxious about getting them. It made me feel like, you never know who is going to come through with their weird opinions when you’re lying with your legs open on an exam table.”

The repercussions of “failing” a virginity test are far graver. Halaleh Taheri, founder of the Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation (MEWSO), explains Islamic customs denote a woman should be a virgin when she is married, and the repercussions are dire for those who can’t.

“The girl will be in trouble with her family, her culture and her community,” she tells me. “Her husband-to-be might abandon her or, if they stay together, it might cause problems down the line because he will always remind her that she wasn’t a virgin.” In extreme cases, women have committed suicide or have been murdered by their families. Aneeta Prem, president of Freedom, a charity working to end violence against women, told me some women she works with were deeply distressed by the results, selling their laptops, phones and clothes to afford a hymenoplasty.

Health professionals are in a tough spot when it comes to deciding whether to provide a test. Refusing might put the girl in more danger. In 2018, an Iranian couple ended up in court after threatening their 18-year-old daughter with a knife when they found out about her secret boyfriend. The pair forced their daughter to visit the GP for a virginity test. The GP declined, but it stands to reason the teenager’s safety was under threat. An aesthetician I spoke to who runs a private clinic and has provided the checks to patients she’s known for years recalls some women being “disappointed and panicky” when they find out the news. She says, “It’s a sad situation, but I know it’s part of their culture.”

Understanding how to move forward is complex. A quick-fix like banning hymenoplasties fails to address the underlying cause of backwards attitudes around hymens and women’s bodies, reinforced through our social, political and religious agendas. How do we begin to undo decades of sexist delusions designed to control women’s autonomy? Neelam thinks a good place to start is in our classrooms. “We need to teach that safe sex and boundaries are more important than virginity,” she says. “And we need an intersectional approach - one including LGBTQ people.” Indeed, it was only after her test that Sophia came to realise she had the capacity to refuse. “No one has the right to do that, I know that now,” she says. “At the time I didn’t know I had a choice.” Like female genital mutilation (FGM), which is set to be added to the secondary school curriculum this year, MEWSO are advocating for teenagers to be taught about virginity testing. Halaleh adds, “Children over the age of 16 must be made aware that the hymen means nothing, men and women are equal in terms of sexuality. After one or two generations of education, we won’t face these issues.”

*Names have been changed.

"Why Does He Do That?"

by Lundy Bancroft

In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship.

He says he loves you. So...why does he do that?

You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about:

• The early warning signs of abuse
• The nature of abusive thinking
• Myths about abusers
• Ten abusive personality types
• The role of drugs and alcohol
• What you can fix, and what you can’t
• And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely

“This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Like the Emilie Autumn song. Nice title.

[The New California Republic]

Wow that OP is info overload.

[West Leas Oros 2]

Buongiorno.

[Giovenith]

Thank you, everyone. And if you have any suggestions for the OP, feel free.

I was thinking of using the reserved spot to highlight a changing array of specific topics. Will all that's going on, perhaps something relating to feminism for women of color?

[Anatoliyanskiy]

Yet again, unrelated from the current topic, but thanks for adding ecofeminism.

[Giovenith]

Yet again, unrelated from the current topic, but thanks for adding ecofeminism.

No problem. Any ecofeminist material you'd want to see up there?

[Kowani]

If NS had OP award contests, I would definitely nominate this one.

[Outer Sparta]

Wow there's a lot of good info there and includes good resources for both women and men's issues.

[Sundiata]

But yes, this series of threads reminds me of the responsibility that men have to women in the forms of fatherhood, brotherhood, friendship, courtship, and spousal duties.

[Centai Mal]

Can I ask what y'all think of the Men's Lib movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

[Sundiata]

Can I ask what y'all think of the https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/ movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

It's not a good thing for men to get so careless with respect to their duties as men. These men would be better served joining the Knights of Columbus.

I'm also glad to see that you're a fellow Catholic.

[Dumb Ideologies]

That's a mightily well put-together OP.

[Centai Mal]

Can I ask what y'all think of the https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/ movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at least on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

It's not a good thing for men to get so careless with respect to their duties as men. These men would be better served joining the Knights of Columbus.

I'm also glad to see that you're a fellow Catholic.

Did you bother to read the page? At all? It talks about advancing equality between men and woman, not about "getting careless with respect to their duties as men"

[Giovenith]

Can I ask what y'all think of the Men's Lib movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

I haven't seen that one before, though it's nice to see a Reddit men's group that isn't just bashing women for not sleeping with them. The Reddit misogynists and the Tumblr misandrists are just two sides of the same coin to me: Individuals who probably started out as having legitimate anger and grievances, but got twisted and radicalized by hyperbolic echo chambers. I think, though, there's been a notable shift in the zeitgeist towards more productive conversation and less pointless, angry complaining.

[West Leas Oros 2]

Can I ask what y'all think of the https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/ movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

It's not a good thing for men to get so careless with respect to their duties as men. These men would be better served joining the Knights of Columbus.

I'm also glad to see that you're a fellow Catholic.

I don’t like this line of reasoning. What duties does a man have, anyway? The way I see it, society expects so much from men and keeps telling them that it’s for their own sake, but it isn’t. All it is is society keeping men from reaching their true potential. Forcing them to be what society wants them to be, with no regard for his aspirations or goals. A man has a duty to be a decent human being, just like anybody else, but he has no duty to be what everyone thinks he has to be. This sort of thing is what leads to hateful rhetoric. Men and women are unique individuals, and forcing them to be somebody they don’t want to be only breeds mistrust and harmful prejudices against them.

[Frostnia]

Can I ask what y'all think of the Men's Lib movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

I haven't seen that one before, though it's nice to see a Reddit men's group that isn't just bashing women for not sleeping with them. The Reddit misogynists and the Tumblr misandrists are just two sides of the same coin to me: Individuals who probably started out as having legitimate anger and grievances, but got twisted and radicalized by hyperbolic echo chambers. I think, though, there's been a notable shift in the zeitgeist towards more productive conversation and less pointless, angry complaining.

If you want more communities like that, may I suggest taking the bropill?

[Centai Mal]

Can I ask what y'all think of the Men's Lib movement? I'm in it, and it generally, at leas on the reddit platform, seems to be pretty pro-feminist

I haven't seen that one before, though it's nice to see a Reddit men's group that isn't just bashing women for not sleeping with them. The Reddit misogynists and the Tumblr misandrists are just two sides of the same coin to me: Individuals who probably started out as having legitimate anger and grievances, but got twisted and radicalized by hyperbolic echo chambers. I think, though, there's been a notable shift in the zeitgeist towards more productive conversation and less pointless, angry complaining.

That’s why I like the group. There’s a real focus on healthy discussions of the ways the men are disadvantaged (particularly in mental health and child care/custody) without everything turning into “but women are evil”

[Giovenith]

I haven't seen that one before, though it's nice to see a Reddit men's group that isn't just bashing women for not sleeping with them. The Reddit misogynists and the Tumblr misandrists are just two sides of the same coin to me: Individuals who probably started out as having legitimate anger and grievances, but got twisted and radicalized by hyperbolic echo chambers. I think, though, there's been a notable shift in the zeitgeist towards more productive conversation and less pointless, angry complaining.

If you want more communities like that, may I suggest taking the bropill?

Very cool! I think I'll throw them both up in the OP somewhere. Probably I'm not the only person in search of that stuff.

[Frostnia]

If you want more communities like that, may I suggest taking the bropill?

Very cool! I think I'll throw them both up in the OP somewhere. Probably I'm not the only person in search of that stuff.

What I particularly like about them is that they're not anti-masculinity; they want to make the concept better, and to try and combat toxic ideas that may have settled in men's heads, not tear down the entire concept as evil. They're proud of being men and "bros", but don't let that get in the way of healthy relationships and emotions.

[Giovenith]

Very cool! I think I'll throw them both up in the OP somewhere. Probably I'm not the only person in search of that stuff.

What I particularly like about them is that they're not anti-masculinity; they want to make the concept better, and to try and combat toxic ideas that may have settled in men's heads, not tear down the entire concept as evil. They're proud of being men and "bros", but don't let that get in the way of healthy relationships and emotions.

I appreciate that too. There's nothing wrong with being a traditional manly man bro type if that's what you're into, the point should be that there's nothing about that kind of personality that requires disrespect towards women or other types of men. Just be ourselves all together, you know?

[Centai Mal]

Very cool! I think I'll throw them both up in the OP somewhere. Probably I'm not the only person in search of that stuff.

What I particularly like about them is that they're not anti-masculinity; they want to make the concept better, and to try and combat toxic ideas that may have settled in men's heads, not tear down the entire concept as evil. They're proud of being men and "bros", but don't let that get in the way of healthy relationships and emotions.

I’m gonna look into that, then. I’m pretty proud of being masculine (even if I have my more feminine traits) and I like the focus on healthy masculinity

[Forsher]

Ah, the black hole of interesting topics better suited for individual discussion returns.

Thus far the thread consists almost entirely of people praising a post full of external links and suggestions to go offsite. Which while compromising the blackhole metaphor rather says it all.

If NS had OP award contests, I would definitely nominate this one.

Start one.

I mean, I remember the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018 ones... I even ran 2015-16 myself.

I can't remember if someone asked to do 2017 or if I just couldn't be arsed doing it. Hell, I might have suggested someone else do it like this.

Someone asked to do 2019's but as far as I can tell never got round to it. Never to late to start it up again. I won't be doing it since as I told the 2018 OP:

I am, however, too jaded these days, too convinced that NSG has lost all sense of community and if it hasn't I post too infrequently to notice that community... without a community of Generalites, the poster awards just aren't the same.

I blame megathreads.

It's not a good thing for men to get so careless with respect to their duties as men. These men would be better served joining the Knights of Columbus.

I'm also glad to see that you're a fellow Catholic.

I don’t like this line of reasoning. What duties does a man have, anyway? The way I see it, society expects so much from men and keeps telling them that it’s for their own sake, but it isn’t. All it is is society keeping men from reaching their true potential. Forcing them to be what society wants them to be, with no regard for his aspirations or goals. A man has a duty to be a decent human being, just like anybody else, but he has no duty to be what everyone thinks he has to be. This sort of thing is what leads to hateful rhetoric. Men and women are unique individuals, and forcing them to be somebody they don’t want to be only breeds mistrust and harmful prejudices against them.

Damn, is this seriously the most interesting on topic post in here so far? Ugh.

The individual is socially constructed and the notion that they have aspirations or goals outside of that context is extreme arrogance. Any perceived sense of duty or being will shape entirely and wholly those aspirations and goals, in the same way that a penalty taken 7-0 up is not the same as penalty taken in stoppage time at 0-0.

What I find interesting is that there is definitely a masculine ideal that is rigidly opposed to social pressure. I'm sure there's a quote to the effect of "if they push one way, push back" but that doesn't appear to be it (or the quote is way more obscure than I think it is). This is presumably related to a sort Atlas-style burden to bear the weight of the world on one's shoulders, but whether it evolved out of a perceived duty to put food on the table and provide the bills, who knows? Similarly, how to judge the outcome of this ideal? Does it encourage embracing the heteronormie life? Deciding that whatever the world wants and throws at the being, picking up that burden and carrying it anyway is the way to go? Or would it entail a total rejection? Both are entirely logical outcomes...

[Giovenith]

Ah, the black hole of interesting topics better suited for individual discussion returns.

Thus far the thread consists almost entirely of people praising a post full of external links and suggestions to go offsite. Which while compromising the blackhole metaphor rather says it all.
...
Damn, is this seriously the most interesting on topic post in here so far? Ugh.

I'm so sorry the thread is only four hours old, I'll try harder to time travel next time.

What I particularly like about them is that they're not anti-masculinity; they want to make the concept better, and to try and combat toxic ideas that may have settled in men's heads, not tear down the entire concept as evil. They're proud of being men and "bros", but don't let that get in the way of healthy relationships and emotions.

I’m gonna look into that, then. I’m pretty proud of being masculine (even if I have my more feminine traits) and I like the focus on healthy masculinity

What would you say your trait make-up looks like? What do you like to do?