A big assortment of pictures, video, and reading today.
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“So Much For Able-ists”, via Saying Nothing Charmingly: Impassioned pas de deux by a women with one arm and a man with one leg.
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It is legal for women to walk around topless in public in New York City. In the “Uncovered” exhibition, photographer Jordan Matter imagines what life might look like for women in NYC if this was not just legal, but routine and unremarkable.
I found this exhibition absorbing. It could be superficially viewed as a photo-parade of breasts; but it has a completely different impact to the trivial, commercialised exploitation of exhibits like the “Booby Wall”. In “Uncovered”, the women have heads, they are placed in context, they are real people experiencing real life – not reduced to headless torsos poking their breasts at a camera.
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From Melissa at Shakesville: “Five Reasons Why “Teach Women Self-Defense” Isn’t a Comprehensive Solution to Rape”.
What this post is intended to address is the exceedingly common recommendation in rape threads that women should “learn how to protect themselves” as the (one-and-only) solution to rape, and the equally frequent comment that people have enrolled their daughters in martial arts classes so they “will know how to take care of themselves.”
Self-protection is, at best, one part of a comprehensive solution to rape—and it’s not even as straightforward as it may seem.
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The BBC reports on a Nursing Standard study into paediatric hospital decor: “Hospital clown images ‘too scary'”.
Researcher Dr Penny Curtis said: […] “We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.”
Dr Curtis stressed the importance of consulting with children – who like colourful spaces and references to contemporary culture – when designing or changing the hospital environment.
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Jay at Two Women Blogging contemplates “The Language of Medicine “.
I majored in English in college, much to the consternation of the pre-med advisers and most of the people who conducted my med school interviews. What on earth does literature have to do with medicine? Wouldn’t I have been better off boning up on biochem and physiology?
Nope. The best possible preparation for my work was the four years I spent immersed in, obsessed with, entranced by language. What do I do all day? I listen to people tell me stories. I wonder about the reliability of the narration, about the themes and metaphors and symbols in what I’m hearing. And then I write the story down.
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Bluemilk has a response to to Clementine Ford’s column on abortion: “Grateful“.
People are flat out fronting up to yearly dental visits, so how anyone can possibly think that women would ever be casual about abortions is beyond me. But lest you be mistaken for the woman who didn’t find redemption you’re obliged to talk about your abortion with shame and regret. Well good on you Clementine Ford for setting other women (and their male partners) free by telling your truth.
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“Holy Constitution!” [Salon, free Site Pass available.] Joe Conason examines theocrat and US presidential hopeful Huckabee’s drive to enshrine Christian biblical law into the US Constitution. Scary stuff.
At a public forum on the eve of the Michigan primary, while mocking Republican opponents who don’t want to append a “marriage amendment” or a “life amendment” to the Constitution, he said: “I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”
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Mercury! The Messenger spacecraft has taken pictures of a side of Mercury we’ve never seen before.
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“Can I have hepatitis with that?”
A dopey jock got a drunken tattoo in Thailand. He is now suffering from his artist’s overdose of literalism and underdose of English spelling skill. And, likely, a rather bad headache. His tattoo now reads:
RIGHT ARM
GAY PREMIERS 2007
GEELONG
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And last but not least, a funny and touching story from The Portly Dyke: “The Bedlam Yarns #1: Glen Miller in the Air Vent”. Comment five, which contains a very very mild and non-specific BSG spoiler, is full of win.
Categories: arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies, gender & feminism, linkfest, medicine, Politics, religion
Hoyden About Town 
That image from The Simpsons was exactly the one I thought of when I read that story about scary clowns.
Jay’s medicine language experience is interesting (eta: and varies from reports in Aus). I actually remember hearing a high-school principal tell the parents of new students that one of last years graduates had gone on to study medicine. The next week I had a moment to talk to him and decided to be blunt: that I didn’t think it was a good idea to say such a thing when many, many parents knew that medicine was now a postgraduate degree so that it was logistically impossible for a high-school graduate to go straight into a medical degree. His answer was “oh, but he’s studying physiotherapy, and of course he’ll go on to medicine from there!” I told him that, knowing someone on USyd’s selection committee, I was confident that advising students who wanted to do medicine to follow such a course was bad advice, because selection committees positively favour more well-rounded applicants, but I don’t think he believed me.
If all the people who want to be doctors are only doing bioscience degrees as preparation for med school, it makes life difficult for other professions in the health field to plan adequately for how many practitioners will actually result from their training programs. How many people studying nursing, physiotherapy, anatomy&physiology, biochemistry, pharmacy etc are only there to get high marks to make it into med school?
While doing a project for business study I analysed the HR procedure at Ballarat Base Hospital (2000+ employees,it serves the entire area beyond Ballarat and is a huge industry)
I discovered that the ‘shortage of country doctors’ they squawk about, is because they will only hire an applicant who ALSO has a Management Qualification (of the type I was studying when I did the effing analysis)
so picture this: parents running to Casualty with bleeding child, and how vital to them is it whether their Saviour understands Organisational Environment?
eejits run everything.
Brownie Bwca O’Dyne’s last blog post..New Beau Brummell
I’m really loving those photos of bare-torso women in NYC. The reactions of people around them are often the best part. Like this one [link] and the woman covering her son’s eyes in this one [link]
The last link above and this one were particularly telling: why is it socially OK for him and not for her? [link]
Oh, and this was exactly how I felt before my breast reduction surgery. [link]
Isn’t the exhibition terrific? It took me ages to start to articulate why I like it. There’s a bit of a discussion going on about it at Kate’s place, too.
Lauredhel’s last blog post..52nd Carnival of Feminists
Heee. I’m glad you liked my comment at Teh Portly Dyke. 😀