Friday Hoyden: Dagmar Berne
[image from National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame] As a teenager, Dagmar Berne, of Sydney, was sent by her widowed mother for a “good education” in a private school, Springfield Ladies’ College. The curriculum included such traditional “ladies’ accomplishments” as deportment and needlework. Discontented, she eventually convinced her mother to allow her to leave school [...]
Speaking Truth
Three pieces of art for you. Cancer Sampler Twisty has an amazing piece of embroidery art up on her blog. For those who don’t know her, Twisty was last year recovering from a debilitating regime of breast cancer treatment when she discovered she was also the carrier of a gene likely to cause her further [...]
Satan’s Bed
As promised to la doctorita in this thread: the dangers of Secret Vice, or Self-Pollution. Published in Chicago by the “Vitalogy Association” in 1926 is the comprehensive home health encyclopaedia, “Vitalogy”, by E. H. Ruddock. The encyclopedia covers everything under the sun, but I suspect most people flip straight to the sex pages, and the [...]
“Perhaps the simplest way to begin is to plunge a knife into the male urethra”
“Anatomy is one of the key sites for the production and maintenance of sex and gender as embodied dualities, as these excerpts imply. It offers an institutionalized discourse rife with vivid representations which claim the body for medicine and then insist on simplification and universalization.” [Lisa Jean Moore and Adele E. Clarke, "Clitoral Conventions and [...]
Fundiewatch: a Catholic prenatal diagnosis “counselling service”
Two of our local Catholic hospital networks have collaborated to offer a new so-called “counselling service, dubbed “Mamreh”. These two hospitals combined have a lot of community credibility already, as they provide the vast majority of private-hospital maternity services in this State. Baby-catching (or baby-cutting-out, for over half the births in these hospitals) is big [...]
New Yorkers always tell us not to bother with Long Island anyway
If I never go to Long Island then I never have to worry about some unfortunate accident bringing me or someone I love under the knife of neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who is a professor of neurosurgery and paediatrics at State University New York (Stony Brook), and who apparently doesn’t accept that the mind arises from [...]
Blood on her shoes: hospital safety equipment and embedded sexism
There were no size 5 gumboots on the surgical unit. I was doing a six-month obstetrics & gynaecology residency. I looked all through the women’s theatre changeroom. I found nothing but single-use elasticated paper shoe covers, and a few pairs of clogs and sneakers. I sneaked into the men’s theatre changeroom. There were lots of [...]
Harradine’s poverty legacy continues
Sue Dunlevy writes an excellent column today on the legacy of Senator Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Australian Senate for long enough to drag our foreign aid policy into a position whereby, Dunlevy argues, we actively perpetuate poverty through being forbidden to provide family planning services as part of foreign [...]
Cancer genes and other factors
There’s been a lot of press this last week about the reported breakthough in genome testing that will pinpoint clusters of imperfectly-copied genes that increase the risk of inheriting breast cancer. Much of the excitement is due to the fact that the technique can be equally well used in testing for other genetic combinations that [...]
Skepticism and Autism
The 31st Skeptics’ Circle is up at Terra Sigillata. Biotech, alternative medicine, climatology, religion and more. My favourite post is by Dick about his personal experiences with The Fleecing of the Autism Community. “These frauds sell crap, preying on the concern of parents for their children. They guilt us by saying, “Wouldn’t you do anything [...]
We knew it was bad for you, see!?!
A sample of the headlines: Abortion increases stress: study Abortion increases mental health risk: study Abortion raises depression risk, say NZ researchers Abortion study backs pro-life debate Don’t you just love the way the MSM so baldly states its beat-up of the day? Of course the study isn’t the slam-dunk they present it as. Here [...]
Recent Comments
Lauredhel, eilish, Orlando, Kate Donovan
The Amazing Kim, tigtog, Lauredhel, tigtog
tigtog, fmark
Feminist Avatar, Orlando, Feminist Avatar, The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, Mindy, tigtog [...]
cady, cady, angharad, Mindy, The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, Mindy [...]
Gayle Kennedy, Mindy, Gayle Kennedy, Jo, Lauredhel
David, AMM, angharad, angie_b, Chris, angharad [...]
Chris, Mary, Chris, tigtog, Mary, Chris [...]
Sharon M, Chris, Helen, Chris, Helen, Helen [...]
tigtog, Orlando
Aqua, of the Questioners, tigtog, David, Mindy, tigtog, Mindy [...]
Perla Buttons, The Amazing Kim, Mindy