Misogyny in healthcare and women’s disabilities

Ania over on The Orbit discusses how the misogyny of front line healthcare providers can result in delays for women who may be experiencing the early symptoms of chronic illness. This delay in healthcare often exacerbates the problem:

On my Facebook memories page, I found an old Tumblr picture that includes stories from a series of girls talking about how their appendix burst because they didn’t realize the pain they were feeling wasn’t cramps. The post goes on to explain the difference between menstrual pain and appendix pain. The stories were a way for girls to discuss just how painful cramps can be – that appendicitis, which is known to be extremely painful, was not different enough from their regular menstrual pain to be noticeable.

I had shared the post, along with my commentary that the suggestion to talk to your parents or school nurse about pain, even if it was “only cramps”, ignored the reality of most people who experience menstruation who are told that they are overreacting and to suck it up. Many of us have been told that all women deal with it and that it’s not that bad. Even when my cramps would leave me shaking and with a fever, I was expected to go to class and carry on as though everything was normal. After all “every woman goes through the same thing”. (Not all women actually, and not all people who do are women, but that’s another post for another time).

In terms of what to do, this seems harder. More frustratingly, the impetus of finding a not-piece-of-shit doctor is on the patient, rather than the system which is unlikely to discipline a doctor for this kind of negligence. I suppose in terms of preserving your health it that’s what you might have to do–ask around for someone who will take the initial reports seriously and consider additional screening early on.

All of which is moot, of course, if you’re American and don’t have coverage. sigh. Every time I do homework in this area I find myself fantasizing about lining the GOP against the wall and executing them by firing squad. The degree and severity of utter negligence just astonishes me. I thought sociopaths were vanishingly rare but apparently enough Republican voters are just peachy with these outcomes?

-Shiv

Including chronic illness in your healthcare activism

Get your IUD before Planned Parenthood closes? Stock up on your meds? Well, when your med is radiation, that’s not exactly an option. Alaina Leary points out that the Affordable Care Act repeal, if/when it comes, is going to come down hard on those with chronic illnesses above all else:

With all the recent public discussion about the Affordable Care Act and women’s access to health care, I’ve seen a lot of posts urging people to “seek healthcare now, while you still can.” They suggest that readers stockpile their medications, schedule all their annual visits, and look into long-term birth control like IUDs. These tips are meant to help, and will help many. But they almost always leave people with disabilities and chronic health conditions out of the conversation — and we’re arguably one of the most vulnerable groups that can be affected by universal healthcare laws.

While some medications can certainly be stockpiled (my dad has been stockpiling his acid reflux and allergy medications for over two years now in case he ever loses coverage again), many cannot, including chemotherapy, insulin injections, birth control, many medications for mental health conditions, and any controlled substance. Stocking up on meds is a good idea for the basically healthy and able-bodied, but it’s not feasible for many of the people who are in the most danger from losing their prescription coverage.

“Get an IUD now before birth control stops being covered” is also fantastic advice — except for all the people it leaves out. I’m on a daily hormonal birth control entirely for serious medical reasons; I’d be physically devastated if the Pill became prohibitively expensive, whether I got an IUD or not. There are also plenty of people who can’t choose IUDs because their bodies will reject them, or they won’t be able to physically get it implanted to begin with. By treating IUDs as an imperative, we risk not only ignoring these people but making them feel alienated and hopeless.

Here’s another vile fact to file under “reasons Republican voters should be disenfranchised”–estimates of the number of people dying without healthcare if the ACA is repealed and the individual mandate is not replaced come in between 36,000/year to 64,000/year, the majority of which would be folks with chronic illness. “Negligent manslaughter” is an understatement.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: The benefits of having disabled kids in your class

Disability rights are something even ess jay double-yoos frequently fail on, so I’m going to round up a few articles over the next few days to really signal boost some disability activism.

Today Sarah Kurchak discusses the benefits of having disabled children in your public education classes.

When I was in school, I liked integrated classrooms because they led to some of my best memories. Like becoming friends with M, a girl with good taste in toys, an offbeat sense of humor entirely in line with my own, and Down syndrome. We met in kindergarten and stayed close until she moved away a few years later. Or the morning ritual that I developed with my friend J when she started using a wheelchair more regularly in high school — we’d meet in front of the building’s brand new accessible elevator to ride up to first period science on the second floor together, often accompanied by our non-verbal classmate, N, and his full-time assistant. J’s part-time assistant also helped me build my woodworking project after I had a minor episode in grade nine shop class. I wonder if she took one look at the girl flinching at the sound of the buzz saws and perseverating about the potential for gruesome saw-related accidents and realized that helping me wasn’t exactly out of her purview as a special educator.

When I was finally diagnosed with autism at the age of 27, it was those memories that saved me. The fallout from that long-overdue diagnosis might have been a shambles of frustration, relief, confusion about what to do next, and a slew of backhanded support (more than one good friend responded to my news by saying “Well, I hope you’re not going to use that as an excuse to be an asshole.”). But the one thing I didn’t struggle with was calling myself “disabled.” It was easy for me to embrace that I had a disability — or anyway, easier than it might otherwise have been — because disabled people were already a normal part of my life. And there was certainly no shame or discomfort to be had in the realization that I was even more like my friends than I’d previously considered.

Kurchak brings up a good point. Ability is not always something we are born with–in some skills and circumstances, it is learned. Which means it can be forgotten, either because we stop using it, because we become injured, or because we always had a disability even if it wasn’t recognized.

Just knowing people with disability will increase the mindfulness regarding public policy. I see plenty of us filthy SJWs rightly twisted in knots over–well, damn near everything at this point–but not as much commentary on DeVos knowing fuck all about disability rights laws for American students. Maybe more activists would be less likely to forget if they were educated in integrated classrooms.

-Shiv

Basically me on dating apps

I’m almost done the mountain of long-form work I accidentally took on all at the same time. In the mean time, have a post that basically describes me on dating apps:

Hi, Lauren –

Thank you for your interest in the position of David’s Girlfriend. We reviewed your profile, and we are excited to extend an invitation to a first date. The date will last approximately one hour. Please reply with your availability and your preference for a coffee meeting or light outdoor physical activity (i.e. walking, visiting a park).

Best regards,

Susan

***

Sounds great! I could do coffee at 2pm Saturday.

Lauren

***

Lauren –

You are confirmed for a Coffee Date on Saturday, Dec. 11 at 2 p.m. CST at Gradient Coffee Roasters. Be prepared to discuss general background information, your careers, and some pop culture topics. Please arrive at least 10 minutes early in order to purchase your coffee and avoid any confusion around payment.

Best regards,

Susan

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Don’t fuck someone whose political views fuck you

Hanna Brooks Olsen has some advice for feminists dating Trump supporters: Break the fuck up.

A partner who voted for and continues to support a candidate who undermines your humanity does not respect your humanity.

It’s important, too, to remember what a privilege it is to “agree to disagree,” young (probably) white feminist. Your peers who are more marginalized bear the brunt of your connivance. Continuing to date someone who undermines you (and them) tacitly permits these views to exist.

…

Young person, there are people in the world (of all genders!) who not only agree with your political views, but agree with your fundamental belief that you are a human being who is worth loving. There are people in the world that you can be in a relationship with who don’t make you feel like you’re “too sensitive” for getting upset over an executive order, who don’t need to be asked not to call refugees “illegals,” and who will support you in your various causes.

In short, young person, I hope you at least remember this: Don’t fuck someone whose political actions could fuck you.

Wurd.

-Shiv

That’s a very odd definition of “safety”

I’m sure exactly zero people need to be reminded of the sheer volume of misdirection coming out of the White House, but Joe Sands has a pretty on-point review comparing Sean Spicer/Trump’s statements regarding safety to the regulations the Republicans are about to strip.

Contrast Trump:

We’re going to put the safety of Americans first, we’re not going to wait and react, as I said in the statement, the president is going to be very proactive in protecting this country.

With Trump’s plan:

We have Superfund sites that have been operating for years, decades even, where the entire mission is to clean up the downstream pollutants. Superfund sites are reactionary. Much like disallowing visas from Saudi Arabia would be, after the attack on September 11, 2001. A mining company comes in, legally pollutes the land and waterways, and then leaves or goes bankrupt, and the government (the EPA) is left holding the bag. The citizenry of the United States pays billions of dollars a year to clean up the environmental damage to our water and land.

Much like the current administration states that the “extreme vetting” refugee rules are proactive, rather than reactive, an argument that can be proven (and debated) on its merits, they also say that the “mission of the EPA is to protect (should be read: proactively) our air and water.”

But Congress is now using the Congressional Review Act to completely eliminate that rule, rolling back the proactive protections of our environment, going back to only worrying about the permitted areas, or at least removing the protections from regulatory oversight, making it easier for a mining company to circumvent responsibility for polluting our downstream waterways.

If your sanity can handle it, read more here.

-Shiv

A Nazi’s guide to not getting punched in the face

Andrea Grimes published a tips guide for Nazis on How to Not Get Punched in the Face.

Of course, it’s not fair that Nazis should have to change anything about their behavior or beliefs just to avoid being punched in the face, but if I knew a Nazi personally, I would hope they would heed this advice. You wouldn’t leave an expensive watch sitting on your driver’s seat and abandon your car, unlocked, on a dark street, would you? And then come up shocked to find the watch gone and your car vandalized? I mean, you can’t go around doing, saying, and believing racist things—like quoting Nazi propaganda and Hitler himself—and then express surprise when someone clocks you in the gourd for it. Not that there is anything inherently unconscionable with doing, saying, and believing racist things!

Sounds legit.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Stealth is not safe

Y’all should be reading Alyssa already, but in case you aren’t, let me signal boost a post to get you started.

“Stealth,” for the uninitiated, refers to pretending one’s gender doesn’t bear the adjective “trans.” It means pretending to be a cis representative of one’s gender, to have been recognized as a member thereof for one’s entire life, and to have never borne a different name. “Going stealth” means hiding a large chunk of one’s past and papering over the resulting gaps with denial and occasional lies. This was once medically mandated for transgender women, who were expected to leave their hometowns and live somewhere where no one knew their history. And it doesn’t work.

…

Even this picture is overly rosy. Many of us get found out, not because of our path through time, but because of our path through space. Especially in a world where I felt I had to deny this piece of myself in order to survive, I would require the support of the local queer community, but being seen in association with such a community is itself dangerous. I would be spending time among other transgender women and be flagged by association. Deadly raids are the incident that sparked the Gay Pride movement, and still occur in some of these places. Even if I keep my honesty confined to online conversations, these generate records that can be accessed to identify me and my associates. The level of denial and concealment I would have to maintain to make sure that my actual public presence holds no trace of my transness would undo many of the gains I have achieved by transitioning in the first place, and make all of my surviving friendships dishonest and distant.

Read more here.

Imagine how quiet things would be

I’m busy writing up stuff for BBC’s shitstain documentary, “Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?” (Spoiler: The answer, apparently, isn’t scientists still considered credible in their fields of psychiatry and youth psychological development, which tells you half of what you need to know). Then I’ve got to put a dent in the presentation where I put in hours of effort carefully citing my claims (none of which will be actually checked, knowing presentations. tsk tsk). Then I’ve got some material I can probably turn into a long-form blag post. Lots of detailed takedowns in the near future, but they still take time to actually write.

I’ve also got another fact check of another Jordan Peterson episode but I’m on the cusp of selling this one to Real News™ so it won’t make an appearance here unless editing falls through.

At any rate, Piers Morgan decided the Woman’s March was misandrist, or something, so he suggested this:

And all I have to say is: Man, imagine how quiet things would be if we actually emasculated men.

-Shiv

ThinkProgress dedicates an entire column to Trump’s Gish Gallop

ThinkProgress is starting a series called “This Week in Trump’s America,” where they summarize the fountain of manure flooding forth from the White House. The editor noted:

There is a concept in the debate world called “spread.” You just throw out as many arguments as possible to overwhelm the opposition.

Trump is operating a spread presidency. Much of what he does is sloppy, dishonest and unpopular. But there is lots and lots of it.

It is hard to keep track of, even when IT IS YOUR FULL TIME JOB TO KEEP TRACK OF IT.

What about everyone else?

That’s why we’ve created this series. Each week, anyone can spend a few minutes and find out what Trump was up to.

You can read the positively dizzying summary of Week 1 in Trump’s America here. Unenforceable, illegal executive orders; a god damn Nazi speech; Spicer lying to a degree that even the Beltway media can’t be obsequious to; global gag rule on healthcare organizations that even mention abortion; closing the borders to countries whose citizens haven’t actually committed terrorist acts on Americans; conflicts of interest–the list goes on. And on.

And on.

-Shiv