feminism

Three Muslim women share their stories of removing their hijabs, despite facing fierce opposition.

Article without paywall: https://archive.ph/ZA7x9

Nearly three years ago, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal effectively ended legal abortion in the country. Since then, the Polish government has vigorously repressed the nation’s reproductive rights movement and ramped up surveillance of women who are suspected of terminating their pregnancies. Authorities have violently dispersed demonstrations, threatened activists with prison time and ordered doctors to record all pregnancies in a new national database.

Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, Poland’s draconian crackdown, which was spearheaded by the governing right-wing Law and Justice party, should have been alarming to American supporters of abortion rights. It was always possible that some aspects of what has happened there could happen here.

Now there are reports that laboratory tests to detect abortion drugs have not only been created in Poland but are, in rare cases, also being used there to investigate the outcomes of pregnancies. These tests are not yet known to be in use anywhere else in the world. But Americans would be wise to plan for the possibility that the technology could one day be adopted on this side of the Atlantic and used by law enforcement to suss out whether women have taken abortion pills — which are now banned or restricted in more than two dozen states.

Women in both Poland and the United States have increasingly relied on informal networks for access to mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs typically used in a medication abortion. In both countries, women can easily find information online and via telephone hotlines about how to use them to safely self-manage an abortion. That information often includes tips for protecting yourself from being targeted by law enforcement, as has already happened to some women who took abortion pills or were suspected of doing so.

For years, reproductive rights advocates have assured American women that when these medications are taken by mouth, a doctor cannot determine whether they were taken to induce an early abortion because the symptoms are indistinguishable from a miscarriage and because the drugs don’t show up on toxicology screens.

But Polish scientists claim they’ve devised laboratory methods to detect both mifepristone and misoprostol in biological specimens, and a spokeswoman for the regional prosecutor’s office in Wroclaw confirmed that these tests have been used in Poland to investigate pregnancy outcomes.

In a paper published last October in the journal Molecules, a group of researchers at Wroclaw Medical University’s Department of Forensic Medicine and the Institute of Toxicology Research in Poland described a technique for detecting misoprostol acid, a substance produced by the metabolism of misoprostol, in tissue taken from the placenta and the fetal liver. Weeks later, they published a second paper describing the development of a “rapid, sensitive and reliable method” to detect the other abortion drug, mifepristone, in maternal blood. The studies were conducted as part of a state-funded research project started in 2022.

The researchers, one of whom identifies as pro-choice, wrote that they developed these tests in part out of concern that the availability of abortion pills on the black market poses a public health threat. But it is difficult to see how this form of testing has medical or public health value, given the well-documented safety and efficacy of abortion pills. In effect, it seems strictly punitive — to harass and intimidate people who self-manage their abortions and to collect evidence about anyone who helped them get pills. Under Polish law, women cannot be prosecuted for taking abortion pills, but you can go to jail for helping someone else get them.

Last March, a court in Warsaw found a human rights activist guilty of just that. Justyna Wydrzynska, a co-founder of the Abortion Dream Team, a Polish abortion rights group, was sentenced to eight months of community service for providing abortion pills to a woman in an abusive relationship.

That conviction, the first of its kind in Europe, brings to mind the situation in El Salvador, where abortion is banned under all circumstances, including when the pregnant person’s life or health is in danger, and in cases of rape. Women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths in El Salvador are sometimes accused of homicide and sentenced to years or even decades in prison.

Now that Roe has been overturned, U.S. abortion-rights advocates are bracing for cases like these to become increasingly common in America. A small but growing group of abortion “abolitionists” are calling for women who get abortions to be charged with murder and criminally punished — even put to death. Some Republican lawmakers are listening; this year alone, more than half a dozen states have introduced legislation that would classify abortion as homicide, a strategy experts believe could gain greater support should others fail. One such existing effort: a serious legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s nearly 25-year-old approval of mifepristone that threatens access to the drug across the country. (In mid-August, a federal appeals court panel upheld mifepristone’s approval but with significant restrictions on patients’ access to the drug. The ruling cannot go into effect until the Supreme Court weighs in.)

Amid these concerns, reproductive rights activists need to prepare for the possibility that testing for abortion drugs could happen here, too. Even the threat of such a test could have dire consequences for reproductive health, deepening distrust of the medical establishment and discouraging people from seeking care. Should prosecutors in Poland inspire copycats in American states, no health care provider should enable or support such a move.

The testing methods developed at Wroclaw employ what’s called tandem mass spectrometry, a sophisticated analytical technique regarded as the gold standard for the detection and quantification of chemical compounds in biological material. For decades, the significant cost of mass spectrometers and the technical knowledge needed to maintain and service the machines confined them to highly specialized laboratories. But as the technology has evolved, experts say, it’s become easier to use and far more accessible.

Almost every toxicology lab that supports a coroner’s office or medical examiner’s office in the United States “has several of these instruments, specifically for the purpose of finding drugs and drug metabolites in biological tissues of all kinds,” said Dr. Glen P. Jackson, a professor of forensic and investigative science at West Virginia University. “There are also many labs that work alongside emergency wards to identify poisons and toxins and drugs used in overdoses.” It would be “really quite easy,” he said, for any of them to develop methods similar to those described in these papers.

“There’s the potential for these tools to do a lot of good,” said Nicholas Manicke, a professor of chemistry and forensic science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Dr. Manicke’s research focuses on making mass spectrometry simpler and easier to use for things like cancer research, organ transplantation, screening for explosives at airports and identifying contaminants in food. “But given the political climate, they’re also ripe for use by opponents of abortion.”

Drug testing in clinical settings in the United States is largely unregulated, and the decision-making at individual facilities is often opaque. Michele Goodwin, a law professor at Georgetown University, has documented the dangers of doctors and nurses having discretionary power to interpret state statutes and report their patients to law enforcement. Ms. Goodwin writes in her book, “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood,” how a visit to a doctor’s office or hospital can double as a criminal investigation, leading to arrest and prosecution under a wide range of laws that purport to protect fetuses.

While most such laws preclude bringing charges against the pregnant woman, overzealous prosecutors have nevertheless done so.

Testing for abortion drugs is just the latest effort by the Polish government to enforce a stringent law. It’s a perversion of science for political ends and a possible preview of what awaits us in America’s post-Roe future.

20 years after Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous ‘hot-or-not’ website, developers have learned absolutely nothing.

Two decades after Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash, the infamously sexist “hot-or-not” website that served as the precursor to Facebook, a developer has had the bright idea to do the exact same thing—this time with all the women generated by AI.

A new website, smashorpass.ai, feels like a sick parody of Zuckerberg’s shameful beginnings, but is apparently meant as an earnest experiment exploring the capabilities of AI image recommendation. Just like Zuck’s original site, “Smash or Pass” shows images of women and invites users to rate them with a positive or negative response. The only difference is that all the “women” are actually AI generated images, and exhibit many of the telltale signs of the sexist bias common to image-based machine learning systems.

For starters, nearly all of the imaginary women generated by the site have cartoonishly large breasts, and their faces have an unsettling airbrushed quality that is typical of AI generators. Their figures are also often heavily outlined and contrasted with backgrounds, another dead giveaway for AI generated images depicting people. Even more disturbing, some of the images omit faces altogether, depicting headless feminine figures with enormous breasts.

According to the site’s novice developer, Emmet Halm, the site is a “generative AI party game” that requires “no further explanation.”

“You know what to do, boys,” Halm tweeted while introducing the project, inviting men to objectify the female form in a fun and novel way. His tweet debuting the website garnered over 500 retweets and 1,500 likes. In a follow-up tweet, he claimed that the top 3 images on the site all had roughly 16,000 "smashes."

Understandably, AI experts find the project simultaneously horrifying and hilariously tonedeaf. “It's truly disheartening that in the 20 years since FaceMash was launched, technology is still seen as an acceptable way to objectify and gather clicks,” Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher at HuggingFace, told Motherboard after using the Smash or Pass website.

One developer, Rona Wang, responded by making a nearly identical parody website that rates men—not based on their looks, but how likely they are to be dangerous predators of women.

The sexist and racist biases exhibited by AI systems have been thoroughly documented, but that hasn’t stopped many AI developers from deploying apps that inherit those biases in new and often harmful ways. In some cases, developers espousing “anti-woke” beliefs have treated bias against women and marginalized people as a feature of AI, and not a bug. With virtually no evidence, some conservative outrage jockeys have claimed the opposite—that AI is “woke” because popular tools like ChatGPT won’t say racial slurs.

The developer’s initial claims about the site’s capabilities seem to be exaggerated. In a series of tweets, Halm claimed the project is a “recursively self-improving” image recommendation engine that uses the data collected from your clicks to determine your preference in AI-generated women. But the currently-existing version of the site doesn’t actually self-improve—using the site long enough results in many of the images repeating, and Halm says the recursive capability will be added in a future version.

It's also not gone over well with everyone on social media. One blue-check user responded, "Bro wtf is this. The concept of finetuning your aesthetic GenAI image tool is cool but you definitely could have done it with literally any other category to prove the concept, like food, interior design, landscapes, etc."

Halm could not be reached for comment.

“I’m in the arena trying stuff,” Halm tweeted. “Some ideas just need to exist.”

Luccioni points out that no, they absolutely do not.

“There are huge amounts of nonhuman data that is available and this tool could have been used to generate images of cars, kittens, or plants—and yet we see machine-generated images of women with big breasts,” said Luccioni. “As a woman working in the male-dominated field of AI, this really saddens me.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20230624214433/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/lynn-paltrow-pregnancy-justice-interview.html

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/620581

Similar to Andrea Dworkin's work.

NEC Chair’s Partnership with an Accused Serial Abuser

NOOOOO…

Our NEC Chair has been in a long-term partnership with Martin Manteca who is an accused sexual harasser, abuser, and union buster. Manteca has been accused of sexual harassment in 16 separate depositions. He was also a catalyst that pushed one of our members into full-time prostitution after firing her upon starting her gender transition. And, at least one buddy in Los Angeles did not want to stay with the organization upon finding out who The NEC Chair’s partner is. Despite this, our chair has stayed with him and even brought him to events to meet and interact with survivors and AF3IRM women, such as the Dia De Los Muertos event in LA. While it might be considered her personal choice to stay with a man who allegedly abuses and harasses women he supervises, the act of bringing him in contact with AF3IRM women at official AF3IRM events is an organizational decision with consequences that go far beyond the individual and personal sphere. To focus on minor errors of our comrades is of course, not right. However, the overall attitude of acceptance towards allegedly abusive and imperialist men among leaders in our organization, and the inviting of these allegedly abusive and imperialist men into organizational events, is itself the problem. Everyone makes their own decision on who to date and marry. But leaders can and should be held to a higher standard. Their decisions affect the entire organization and being in leadership requires a sense of responsibility and understanding of how their personal actions can affect the entire organization and its members.

What a PIECE OF SHIT he is! Massive red flag right there. I would have immediately left if that wasn't resolved.

Imperialism is a stage of capitalism developed as a marxist construct; people cannot oppose imperialism without supporting Marxism.

The splitting party really should have left far earlier (in 2021 or 2022).

"Mens' rights" my ASS! lol

Women's rights rule!

Link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-our-unions/202208/the-rise-lonely-single-men

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How to Abort at home with Pills (misoprostol, cytotec)?

The best and safest way a woman can do an abortion herself until the 12th week of pregnancy is with the use of two medicines called Mifepristone (also known as the abortion pill, RU 486, Mifegyn, Mifeprex, Zacafemyl), and Misoprostol (also known as Cytotec, Arthrotec, Oxaprost, Cyprostol, Mibetec, Prostokos or Misotrol). If you live in a country where there is no access to safe abortion services and you would like to obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org).

There are 2 ways to do a medical abortion safely and effectively:

1- Abortion pills through Women on Web

To obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and do the online consultation through https://www.womenonweb.org/en/i-need-an-abortion to get a safe medical abortion using Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Women on Web is an on-line medical abortion referral service that will refer your consultation to a licensed doctor. You will also be asked to make a donation of 70, 80 or 90 euros depending on your economic circumstance and where you live, to make sure that the service continues to be available to help all women. You can make the donation using a credit card or bank transfer.

If the website is blocked please send an email to:info@womenonweb.org 2- On this webpage you can find more information about doing an abortion with the use of Misoprostol alone (approximately 94% effective).

It is very important that you know how many weeks pregnant you are. Have you taken a pregnancy test to confirm your pregnancy? If you cannot have an ultrasound, calculate the duration of pregnancy by counting the number of days since the first day of your last menstrual period.

Using Misoprostol (or Cytotec) alone to cause an abortion will be successful 94% of the time. If it is not effective the first time, you can try again after 3 days. The information is based on research by the World Health Organization. Women who live in a country where they have the possibility to have a safe and legal abortion, should go to a doctor. For abortion clinics worldwide, see https://www.womenonwaves.org/en/map/country If you live in a country where there is no access to safe abortion services and you would like to obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org). Some women attempt to have an abortion by placing sharp or dirty objects into the womb or by punching the belly. This is very dangerous and should never be done because there is a very high risk of wounding the insides of the woman, infection, heavy bleeding and even death.

For many women, ending a pregnancy is a difficult decision. When the woman cannot discuss the abortion or alternatives with a healthcare provider, we advise her to talk about it with a good friend or a relative. We strongly advise any young girl to talk with her parents or another adult she trusts about her situation, her decision and the abortion procedure. Women who are sure that they want to end their pregnancy and have no other means should print and study the instructions carefully first. It is best to discuss them with a friend. A woman should never do this alone.

If you have any questions about this method or experiences you want to share, after reading the information below, send email to info@womenonweb.org How does an abortion with Misoprostol work?

Misoprostol for medical abortion works best in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. After that, there is an increased risk of a complication and need for medical attention. If you are considering using misoprostol after 12 weeks, please contact info@womenonweb.org for instructions; these instructions are for women who are 12 weeks or earlier in their pregnancy.

Misoprostol causes contractions of the womb. As a consequence, the womb expels the pregnancy. A woman can get painful cramps, vaginal blood loss that is more than a normal menstruation, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. There is a risk of heavy bleeding for which a woman will have to be treated by a doctor. The chance that an abortion with Misoprostol will be successful is 94%. Misoprostol is available in pharmacies in almost all countries. The experience and risks of an abortion caused by Misoprostol are similar to those of a spontaneous miscarriage.

Miscarriage happens spontaneously in 15-20% of all pregnancies.

The treatment of complications is the same as those of a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage). If there is a problem, a woman can always go to the hospital or any doctor. The doctor will treat her as if she had a spontaneous miscarriage. There is no way the doctor will know that the woman took medicines.

We will now provide some important information that every woman who thinks about inducing an abortion with medicines should know. A woman should make sure she is pregnant.

She can do a pregnancy test or have an ultrasound. Misoprostol should only be used if a woman is 100% sure that she wants to end the pregnancy. A woman should try to have an ultrasound before taking Misoprostol.

An ultrasound shows whether the pregnancy is in the womb and the length (number of weeks) of a woman's pregnancy. Misoprostol should not be used after 12 or more weeks of pregnancy.

A pregnancy of twelve weeks means 84 days (12 weeks) after the first day of the last menstrual period. If a woman thinks she has been pregnant for more than twelve weeks, or if the ultrasound shows this, we do not advise to take Misoprostol unless the woman has medical supervision. The medicine still works, but the risk of heavy bleeding, serious pain and complications increase the longer the pregnancy lasts. A woman should not do the abortion alone.

While having the abortion, it is important to have someone close by; this can be the partner, a friend or a relative who knows about the abortion and who can help in case of complications. Once the bleeding starts, someone should stay in contact with the woman to be able to help in case complications occur. Misoprostol can only be used without medical guidance when a woman has no serious illness.

Most illnesses are no problem. Some serious illnesses, such as, for instance, severe anaemia, can create problems because of the heavy blood loss involved. Serious illnesses are sometimes a reason for a legal abortion, even in countries with restrictive laws.

Do not use alcohol or drugs during the treatment!!! The woman must be able to pay close attention to what is happening in her body. If the cramps are very painful, she can use Ibuprofen, or a hot water bottle or heating pad, but never alcohol or drugs. Misoprostol should not be used when there is a possibility of an ectopic (or extra-uterine) pregnancy.

An ectopic (or extra-uterine pregnancy) is not in the womb (uterus). An ectopic pregnancy can be detected by having an ultrasound. Treatment by a gynaecologist is then necessary to ensure the health of the woman. If not treated, there is a risk of heavy internal bleeding due to rupturing of the fallopian tube. Gynaecologists treat women for this condition in all countries, even in countries where abortion is illegal. An ectopic pregnancy cannot be treated with Misoprostol. Misoprostol should not be used if the woman has an intra uterine device (IUD).

An IUD is a contraceptive, a small coil of about 3 cm inserted by a doctor in the womb to prevent pregnancy. A Woman who has an IUD and is pregnant must have an ultrasound made because the risk of an ectopic pregnancy is higher. If the pregnancy is in the uterus, it is necessary to have the IUD removed before using doing the abortion. Misoprostol should only be used when transportation within a few hours to a hospital is possible.

That way, if complications occur, medical aid will be near. Misoprostol should never be used if the woman is allergic to Misoprostol or any other prostaglandin.

This is a rare condition, which a woman will be aware of if she has used these medicines and had such a reaction before. If she has never used the medicine before, she cannot have experienced an allergic reaction. There is a possibility that the attempt to cause an abortion with Misoprostol will fail.

The chance that using Misoprostol will cause an abortion is 94%. The treatment has failed if the medicines do not cause any bleeding at all or there was bleeding but the pregnancy still continued. The woman can try to use the medicines again after a few days, but this can fail again. There is only an ongoing pregnancy in 6% of cases.

If more than 14 days after the use of Misoprostol no abortion has occurred, and if no doctor is willing to help, there remains no other option than to travel to another country to have a legal abortion, contact women on web, or to keep the pregnancy. There is a small increased risk of birth defects such as deformities of the hands or feet and problems with the nerves of the foetus, if the pregnancy continues after attempting abortion with these medicines. Some doctors might consider this as a reason for a legal abortion, so try to find one. A possible sexual transmitted infection should be treated.

If there is a risk of a sexual transmitted infection (STI, also known as a sexually transmitted disease, STD) such as Chlamydia or Gonorrhoea, arrange an examination with

Men face sexism too!

You might have heard people dismissing misandry as unimportant because 'there's no systemic discrimination against men' or the famous saying "Misandry irritates. Misogyny kills"

Occasionally, you might hear that there is systemic misogyny, which may occasionally backfire against men occasionally.

But is this true? Let's look at the facts

The Law

According to a very indepth review by Sonja Starr, she deduced that Men get 63% longer sentences for the same crime. While it is true that men are more likely to commit crimes, it doesn't explain the gender disparity, which is alot longer than racial disparity, which means even an African American woman would get a shorter sentence than a white man.

Men's troubles don't start there. Men are more likely to be stopped by the police, and even when women are stopped, we are less likely to be arrested.

Women are also less likely to be killed by the police. And overally, men are 90% of those in prison, 98% of death row inmates, and and 98.8% of those executed.

Now when we hear that African Americans are unjustly being killed by police at higher rates than white people, we rightly protest and accuse the police of discrimination. We also say that if African-Americans commit more crimes than whites it's due to systemic discrimination against them, but if men receive much harsher sentences than women for the same crime and sentencing history, isn't it systemic discrimination.

So, why does this discrimination exist? It's in part due to the 'women are wonderful effect'. Some have argued this is only due to women following traditional gender roles, but even when women are not, we are still seen as wonderful

Violence against women is seen as almost universally evil especially Western nations. According to research done by Richard B Felson, people see violence against women worse than violence against men, especially if the perp is a woman.

Men are discriminated against even when they are the victims, As criminals get harsher punishments for killing women than for killing men.

Mental Health

It's a well known fact that men commit suicide more than women in every country in the world. But what is behind this rate? People argue that since women attempt suicide at higher rates than men, it proves that women are the ones in need of help not men. But men have a higher rate of suicidal intent than women. It seems that many women could be making a suicidal gesture rather than actually wanting to commit suicide.

As a woman, I used to be suicidal but I was able to benefit from therapy, which is what most want.

Some also say that men choose more lethal methods, but this is also not indicative of men's suicide rate because even when men choose the same methods, they still die more than women.

Some say it is due to toxic masculinity, but even that has problems. First of all, if women were more oppressed than men, why would they commit suicide at a higher rate? Secondly, 91% of men who committed suicide did seek help before doing it

So, what is the reason? Well, suicide prevention programs work much better for girls than for boys.

This study shows that men are dropping out of therapy prematurely because therapy was created with women in mind.

To summarize, if men all over the world commit suicide more than women, even when using the same methods, and men drop out of therapy because it doesnt suit their needs, than isn't it systemic discrimination?

Physical Health

Now, everyone knows that women live longer than men in almost every country on Earth. But leave alone the fact that men are more likely to commit suicide, die at work (more on than later), die during a conflict (more on than later), drown, die from an injury, and die from child abuse, let's look at mens health. Men are more likely to die from cancer, heart attacks, and even coronavirus

Despite all this, women's health receives FOUR TIMES as much funding as men's health

Hate crimes

Almost everyone agrees that gay men are oppressed to some degree. But gay men suffer hate crimes more often than gay women do. Other feminists say this is because lesbians are seen as 'sexier' than gay men. But even transwomen are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than trans men. The key here is that even though trans women are women, transphobes dont consider them women, they consider them 'men in dresses' and thus deserving of violence. While transmen usually say that people generally treat them with kid gloves when they find out they were AFAB (assigned female at birth). Bisexual men endure more discrimination than bisexual women.

72 countries have laws against homosexuality, but only about 40 have laws against female homosexuality So in 27 countries, it's banned for men but not for women.

So if men are more likely to be victims of hate crimes, male homosexuality is punished more than female homosexuals, while trans women are being targeted because they are seen as men pretending to be women, doesn't it mean men are systemically discriminated against?

Work

You've probably heard that women make less money than men, and that is an example of discrimination, but the truth is that women choose more fulfilling and safer jobs than men. We also choose jobs closer to home, so we commute less, and we take less overtime and work shorter hours. Here is a video explaining it all.

According to this research, men work almost twice as long as women in a week, do more work in a week even when unpaid labor is considered.

According to this study, men are much more unhappy at work than women

Men are more than 10 times more likely to die at work than women

Boys are more likely to be put in child labor than girls, and according to this study, the work they do is very dangerous and harmful.

So, how is all of this systemic? Well, there is a general cultural and religious duty of men to provide for women. In Christianity as well as Islam, men are told (and sometimes harshly condemned for not) to provide for women, and our children. This leads to men choosing higher paying but more dangerous, less emotionally fulfilling, and farther away jobs so they can provide for women.

However, even though men are in a way 'punished' for choosing such careers by dying more on the job and being more unhappy at work, women aren't really 'punished' for our careers because we still control most of consumer spending.

Which means that many men work punishing hours at a job they dislike and STILL benefit less than women.

This doesn't even take into account all the concessions offices make for women, like breastfeeding rooms, worker maternal leave, etc

Military

Currently, about 60 countries have mandatory drafts for males but only 9 have mandatory drafts for women. In some countries, women serve for a shorter time, like in Israel, women service two years while men serve for 2.5 years.

In some cases, men and boys will be targeted in a military operation or massacre.

​

Retirement rates

Several countries still have a lower retirement age for women

Homes and homelessness

Men are more likely to be homeless in almost every country on Earth.

Read the text here: https://write.as/peace-labor-may/the-fox-woman

Really interesting about how this centers on what Dolly means to people now, rather than on what she has meant to people -- my mother felt very strongly about her working-class feminism and how people looked down on her -- while acknowledging that the two are barely related.

This digs real deep into the lenses on Dolly that come from race and gender. I would only have liked to read more material on class, too--but it's already pretty long so you can't cover everything.