The genetic castrato

Food is a feminist issue. And not only when the right kind of women don't eat.

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:17:07 GMT

Which isn't not in any way to claim that eating disorders aren't a feminist or a mental health issue, because they are.

(title shamelessly stolen from http://www.feministe.us/blog/)

This is a global distributional issue. This is about getting enough to eat. (I make no claim to originality here: several women* are writing on this issue right now.)

Women are roughly 50% of the world’s population, do two thirds of the work, but earn 10% of the income and control just 1% of the world’s wealth.

The price of food everywhere is going up. The major rises in agricultural yield came about because of mechanization and petrochemical fertilizers, both of which become more expensive when energy prices go up. Worse, politically attractive but resource-stupid forays into ethanol have pushed the prices of some food crops higher.

The New York Times this week said that in Peru, women urge action on food prices:

.......Link

More on the DSM-V

Sat, 10 May 2008 09:00:01 GMT

Nice round up by bell

DSM-V

Sat, 10 May 2008 04:55:46 GMT

This is very, very scary.

Yes it is that kenneth Zucker they are talking about, now just personally I'm not a big fan of someone who thinks that we should cure gender variance being anywhere near the treatment of trans* people, and oh it gets better now while transphobia is still front and center of the psychological world, I am yet to meet a melbourne trans* person who likes the monash gender clinic. I thought that out and out homophobia had become less mainstream, but apparently not, not when the DSM is still being written by people who would perfer if we were treated out of existance.

Ken Zucker is a psychologist at the Clarke Institute (aka "Jurassic Clarke") in Toronto. Zucker is famous for forcing gender-variant children into reparative therapy to conform to his expectations for male and female behavior in children. He considers transsexual women a "bad outcome" for gay men.
Zucker is a darling of the "ex-gay" movement because of his work "curing" gender-variant children. Here is a piece featuring his work via ex-gay group NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuals):

....

From the wonderful book "the man who would be queen" a bible of tolerance and understanding (ha)
Zucker found several predictors of adolescent GID: lower IQ, lower social class, immigrant status, non-intact family, and childhood behavior problems unrelated to gender identity disorder. Obviously, none of these factors can be considered very specific. Parental divorce and low social class are both very common, and most males who experience them do not become transsexual. The factors do, however, suggest a common theme: early adversity. I will speculate later about what this might mean. When I have discussed the theory that homosexual transsexuals are a type of gay man, I have met resistance. I was surprised at this, for the idea is neither new nor, it seemed to me, controversial. Some of the resistance was emotional. People who believe that homosexuality is not a disorder tend to dislike the implication that a subset of homosexuals are disordered.

Any math geeks around?

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:02:23 GMT

I have an assignment due where I have to intergrate sin(x)/((1 + x^2)^2) by substuting u = 1/(1 + x^2) and I have no idea how to do it? anyone got any ideas.

edit: got it

You couldn't have just let the territory make it's own rules could you?

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:01:26 GMT

Fail.

I don't care if it is good for your standing, you sold us out when your populatrity was around 80%, the one time you could have got away with being a decent fucking human being.

This seemed appr

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:31:22 GMT

Also, you all suck and I hate you, now give me back my god damn neurotransmitters

Made of win.

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:12:27 GMT

Awesome link of Awesome.

How not to be an arsehole, or in other words That guy

I also want to add this as well

There may well be more later.

I heard about Doctor Graham Reeves

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:55:36 GMT

A while ago, while I was horrified to hear that anyone had ever done something so horrible I was a world more shocked to discover that he wasn't the only one.

I shouldn't have been shocked, these stories come only a little while after those of Jayant Patel a doctor who it is believed was able to move from the US to Australia and begin making the same mistakes, mistakes which killed people because he wasn't stopped because those who tried to stop him had their jobs threatened by management because this doctor was seen as more important that the patients and more important that the nurses.

heads up to trinityva and silverblue

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:21:57 GMT

It seems only right that one of the most cutting responses to celebrity media culture which I have heard this year should come from Britney spears

I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the rich and famous
I’m Mrs. Oh my God that Britney’s Shameless
I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! this just in
I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin
I’m Mrs. ‘Most likely to get on the TV for strippin’ on the streets’
When getting the groceries, no, for real..
Are you kidding me?

No wonder there's panic in the industry
I giggled, and giggled and giggled when I first heard this.

bfp

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:22:49 GMT

So I am late as usual. I have been putting off making this post, because I felt I couldn't do Justice to brownfemipower's history, her impact on the blog sphere, how god damn smart she was, I also feel guilty, I should have linked more, read more done more been better, should have, could have, would have.

They did. They spoke and they deserve to be heard.

As she does.

I am sorry we have lost you, this little bit of the world will be less without you.

Looks, ummm... Interesting

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:49:10 GMT

I don't know much about financial markets and derivatives trading, I am bothered that there are adds on SBS television encouraging those without training to invest in derivatives are attempting to understand these markets is a major source or employment for math PhD's, however I am so much further disturbed by the only for april trade in complcated financial produces and get a free mobile phone

Meme and question

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:33:57 GMT

How do you feel about these? I honestly don't know, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to talk to anyone who used them outside however "disembodied misogyny"? "ludicrously chauvinist"? honestly not seeing it.

Stolen from nicked_metal

Take a look at your LJ friend list, then list up to ten things you want to say to ten different LJ friends. Do NOT state who these people are. DO NOT confirm nor deny any “comment speculation”.

1) Dude deal with it, it's more than a crush.

2) Not only did you make your bed, but you made it over an over again, at some point you have to own your shit.

3) You are wiser and stronger than I could have believed possible. You insire all those around you.

4) This is a bad idea, stop being so god damn tempting.

5) You are extremely smart but you keep saying these things which makes me want to shake you.

6) Get out of my hot air ballon!

7) You know, some people just like shoes.

8) I'm not as smart as you think I am

9) I'm glad you are happy, but I always felt like you deserved more.

10) Where is the money coming from?

Self interview, the questions I would like to be asked. PART 1

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:00:09 GMT

Self interview, the questions I would like to be asked.

So why are you sex positive?

Because I don't believe there is anything wrong with adult consenting sexuality, because I think there are plenty of things wrong with trying how people experience their sexuality, because I think that good women/bad women hurts all women, because I believe that no women benefits from being told that she better be careful or she might just become one of the fallen ones which society doesn't have to care about.

So is that why you support the decriminalisation/legalisation of sex work

No, not really, that comes from my understanding of the effects of criminalisation on behaviour, I don't like drug abuse, I don't encourage people to use addictive drugs but I care about death being prevented and because of that I don't want addicts and other users being afraid police, so afraid in fact that they will not save a life they have the power to save.

Fear of police involvement is overwhelmingly nominated by witnesses of overdose as the main
reason for stopping or delaying seeking help (Darke, Ross et al. 1996b; McGregor, Darke et al. 1998).
Given that witnesses are present at the majority of overdoses, that the effects of overdose are easily
reversible and that immediate death from overdose is rare, any intervention that increases
help-seeking behaviour has the potential to reduce overdose mortality.

[link] page 56

How I feel about sex really doesn't play into how I feel about sex work, nor should it. How I feel about people does, and my reading of the effectiveness of proabition does.
Legalization means stuff like this happens crimanalization means stuff like this does.

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:51:06 GMT

With statistics and even the best of intentions it is easy to be misleading, with the worst of intentions misleading becomes an art of it'self.

Experts Dispute Report Critical of Antidepressants
Eve Bender
Conclusions about antidepressant efficacy based on a meta-analysisof FDA clinical trials raise serious questions.

In late February some headlines heralded bad news for thosebeing treated for depression: "Prozac does not work," declaredone headline from the UK Guardian, "and nor do similar drugs...."

The news was in reaction to a metaanalysis of trials of selectiveserotonin reuptake inhibitors submitted to the U.S. Food andDrug Administration (FDA) from 1987 to 1999. The report appearedin the February 26 PLOS Medicine.
"These findings suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generationantidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvementsin depression in patients who initially have moderate or even verysevere depression," the authors wrote, "but show significant effectsfor only the most depressed patients."

.........

In their editorial, Turner and Rosenthal pointed out that thecriterion set by NICE is "problematic, because it transformseffect size, a continuous measure, into a yes or no measure,thereby suggesting that drug efficacy is either totally presentor absent, even when comparing values as close together as 0.51and 0.49."
They also noted that the NICE criterion is not a definitivemeasure, but a value that could be problematic as a litmus testfor drug efficacy.

In the article, Kirsch and his colleagues noted that drug efficacydid not change as a function of initial depression severity,whereas placebo efficacy decreased as initial depression severityincreased. "Efficacy reaches clinical significance only in trialsinvolving the most extremely depressed patients," the authorswrote, "due to a decrease in the response to placebo ratherthan to an increase in the response to medication."

[link]

See that, blink and you would miss it, unless you dig deeper into the data you might never realise the the change in effectiveness is due to the placebo, not the drugs. This happens all the time, while working as a statistician I have come to the realisation that it is easier to mislead a reader than it is to give them a true picture of what the data says, I honestly struggle to not mislead those who I write for.
I wish the media was more questioning, if I had my way every journalism student would take courses in which they would have to make misleading findings given data in the hope that they would start asking questions of they way that studies where produced, did the researchers consider income, age, education level...? is the effect due to outliers? did the researchers try a non parametric methods to confirm the results?

Humans are too willing to believe a man in a white coat, and we need to stop, it's time to step out of the 80's open our eyes, it's time to be blinded no more

Archer vote passes brothel Bill

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:54:46 GMT

2nd April 2008, 6:30 WST

Brothels will be legal in WA in a matter of months after landmark prostitution legislation was passed last night, despite political and community opposition to the State Government’s controversial reforms.
The Upper House passed the Prostitution Amendment Bill by 14 votes to 13, with ousted Labor MP turned Independent Shelley Archer proving to be the difference in the close count.
Ms Archer backflipped on her stance in recent weeks after brokering a deal with the Government to fund sex and drug education programs in the State’s North-West, which virtually guaranteed the Bill’s passage.
Opposition MPs and anti-prostitution campaigners declared yesterday was a dark day for WA which would lead to tragic consequences and the exploitation of women.
One of the most controversial aspects of the legislation is allowing brothels with up to two sex workers to operate in residential streets without being licensed.

[Link]

This has got no coverage, this is the first I heard of it, and I heard of it from a US based group.

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:05:38 GMT

Hello,

I recently purchased some jewellry from you, I love them, and the quality seems great however the diameter of many of the pieces seem wrong, I have noted down what I measured the size to be with links to the items.

STEEL EAR TATTOOS SPIRALS blackline.

3.9mm (should be 3.2)

8G (3.2MM) PYREX GLASS DOUBLE TWIST PLUGS

3.8mm (should be 3.2)

6g GAUGE SPIRAL CLAWS BUFFALO HORN

4mm

SURGICAL STEEL EAR TATTOOS BLADES

3.7mm (should be 3.2)

FLESH TUNNELS

3mm (should be 3.2)

10G (2.5MM) PYREX GLASS DOUBLE TWIST PLUGS

2mm (should be 2.4mm)

CBR

1.17mm

14g CIRCULAR BARBELLS SURGICAL STEEL

1.57mm

Cisgender/cissexual

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:36:32 GMT

Lisa at questioningTransphobia has been writing passionately about why cisgendered is not a pejorative term, here is a huge clue-by-four, it isn't, it's a descriptor, if you where born in a body you feel comfortable with, don't feel that when people gender you they get it wrong? Well them you are cisgendered.

The piece in this that really struck me was from trinitiy, a genderqueer who like me gets passing privilege.

And I don't entirely think that's misplaced, actually. I mean, the people saying it are saying it mainly because they're virulently transphobic, which is bad. But the truth is that our society doesn't really do much differentiating between people who are gender variant because they just don't fit the usual gender role, or those who are gender variant because they're uncomfortable with their bodies as they currently are, or who are gender variant because they think of themselves as a different gender than the one they "should" supposedly be. Or any combination thereof. (I've met people who, for example, act like regular old men or women as far as I can tell, yet are genderqueer, for example. I've met people who twist gender roles all to hell and are adamant that they're "still a man" or "still a woman." I've met butch trans women and femme trans men.)

And if we're all freaks, if we all don't fit, then it's at least vaguely understandable why someone might bristle at "cisgendered," because who is? Am I? How transgendered am I? I've never been able to answer that.

But the thing is, the big thing, the thing they miss, is that the term cisgendered isn't designed to place people carefully on a continuum. It's designed to remind us all that trans people are exposed to violence, ridicule, and oppression that the rest of us are not, or are not on nearly the same scale. Do I get comments? Yes, but I don't get the uniquely horrifying sort of rape that happened to Brandon Teena(look what you've got here, GIRL), and I've never been murdered.

I feel for Brandon, every time I go to that site I end up starring at the main page so many names, so many lives cut short, so many people who should be here now, who aren't. The chances are pretty good that I will never end up there, never face the choices they have to face, never need to be that brave, they shouldn't have to have been brave either. Their lives should have been enough.

Mercy Ministries: Australian radical christian group charged with welfare fraud.

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:08:26 GMT

Young women with mental health problems where abused in the name of Christianity, all the while being funded by Gloria Jean's.

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:21:57 GMT

POLICE chief Christine Nixon has denied politically correct zealots are making a mockery of recruitment, insisting size and age does not matter.

Blah. Blah. Blah. Same old crap.

Now sadly I can't find the front page picture which accompanied this article, it showed 20-30 graduating cops and was apparently meant to show the great diversity of the police force, there where at least a couple of women and a middle aged guy, but and I think this should be a big but, it was the WHITEST GROUP OF WHITEY MCWHITE'S I have ever seen.

Diversity, for whites.

it's the Maria Bamford Show

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:52:26 GMT

Leave me alone, I'm lonely.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:32:08 GMT

sometimes I think, there are things very few of us grok; that is truly understand unless we see it, feel it in our bones, somewhere deeper than knowing, somthing felt, truly felt.

Criptic

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:51:22 GMT

Demons walk among us, most humans they never have to deal with demons, the see them in the distance.

This week I stood shoulder to shoulder one who did, and still doing battle with a demons.

I am honored.

East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta has been shot.

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:53:57 GMT

My heart goes out, to his family and to the country he spent so long striving for.

My disablity is not your new soap box.

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:31:59 GMT

Depression is one of those things every likes to tell you doesn't exist, or it does, and they know the cause and they know the cure.
Dr Philip Freier blames Christmas presents and pornification!

Now pornification, the idea that our society is become more sexualized, more visual has been blamed for a lot in our time, and it has been blamed for a lot of different things, from rape (because there was no rape before the sixties) to the failure of the feminism revolution
But depression isn't one I have come across before.

The sad reality is that although our society wants us to lavish material gifts on children, it is far too lax about the widespread exploitation of childhood and teenagers that is resulting in serious levels of depression among young people.

Dr Fresier fails in the article to reference or produce any evidence that depression and materialism are related, and saying it doesn't make it true, he goes on to talk about diagnosis rates for over time, and seems to take the data a face value, not allowing for the possibly that depression may be much more likely to be diagnosed in children and teenagers now that it was 30 years ago, with the large changes both in the medical community and the general communities attitudes to mental illness.

I remind our national leaders that there has been a fourfold increase in depression among young people in the past 30 years in this country, with an estimated 100,000 young people now suffering depression. I am told that 20,000 prescriptions are written annually for antidepressants for children and young people.

He goes on to talk about body image, a subject we are mostly in agreement with him in, however he doesn't seem to grasp the difference between body image worries, which while highly upsetting to many young people are not the same thing as depression, nor even the same thing as eating disorders, which they are arguably more closely related to, no matter how neatly Dr Fresier wants all the problems of the world to be directly related to those things which he personally finds questionable he produces no evidence to justify his claims or even show that children and teenages are worse off now than they where in the past. The abs seems to show a slight downward trend in suicides over the last 10 years, This study showed a rise in suicide rates among men in Australia by not women over the 1964 to 96 period, however it's data stops at 1996, which can been seen in the abs figures to be the peak of an unusually high period which has since diminished, I wonder if the same test had been run to finish in 2005 whether the effect would have been significant.

What ever you do in this lucky country, don't end up with some bad luck.

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:16:29 GMT

All in the mind covered a story of what happens when someone fines themselves disabled and unable to work in Australia, they followed a women who had brain surgery though 11 months of her recovery as she tried to get back on her feat, her story is far from the worst, it is however a story of just how close the edge is, an edge that many people in this country live with day in day out.

Kia: I'd resigned about four hours before I had my first seizure and they say that the seizures are brought on by stress. And because of that resignation I was not eligible for sickness benefits because you have to have a job to go back to. So I've gone from earning a full time wage which, as a childcare worker, is not a lot of money but it is triple what you get on Centrelink, so I have had to stay on New Start incapacitated, hand my form in every fortnight even though I can't drive and I'm not mobile.

.............

it's 11 months since the surgery and at no point has she been eligible for a disability support pension. I mean surely recovery from a major, unanticipated surgery like this, of any kind really, provides a basis for disability support pension.

Michael Raper(president of the National Welfare Rights Network): You would hope so. The welfare system ought to provide the safety net that you would expect for somebody in this very condition. But we have tightened the rules so much, and the eligibility conditions for DSP's are so difficult that many people like her – she's by no means the only one – are missing out and are forced onto the New Start allowance, lower payment, more requirements, more risk and having enormous difficulties in the process.

Natasha Mitchell: Michael, what criteria then must a person meet in terms of disability in order to be eligible for a disability support pension through Centrelink?

Michael Raper: Contrary to popular notions that people can easily get on to a disability support pension – which is a view that's held in some parts of the community at least – it's actually very difficult. There are three hurdles that you have to get over. The first is that the condition from which you suffer has to be treated and stabilised and this is the primary area where the person you mentioned has probably missed out in the first instance because what she has got is not yet treated and stabilised. Now that's a very problematic area – many people with cancer for instance are unable to get DSP, the disability support pension, because they are still receiving treatment, chemotherapy or the like and it's not regarded as treated and stabilised.

........

Natasha Mitchell: So Centrelink in the case of the young woman that we recorded the brain surgery with, doesn't see that she has a disability but there's a certain irony. I mean for example she's not able to drive until it's a year after she had her last epileptic seizure, so she's not able to drive. So she is considered in some areas to have a disability.

Michael Raper: Look, I think it would be far better if she were on a disability support pension throughout this time of rehabilitation. She would have a higher level of payment, she would have less anxiety about whether she has to continue to put in medical certificates every two or three months. It's not really though Centrelink that's at fault here of course, it's the way that the parliament has passed the law and the way DEWR, the Department of Employment Workplace Relations implements that with a very strong emphasis on getting everybody who is on a New Start allowance (an unemployment benefit in other words) to work, work, work – work first no matter what. And she's been very lucky in fact to get out of looking for work, or Job Search requirements. Increasingly we are finding that Centrelink is refusing to even accept medical certificates from doctors who say my patient is not able to work, they just don't accept them.

Michael Raper: No, not at all, I mean the AMA should be very upset about this and young people on the counter at Centrelink, because of DEWR, saying basically we have a work first approach here, these people are shirkers, give them one maybe, but in fact many are not even having one medical certificate accepted, and thereafter do not accept the medical certificates, give them some activity, get them back to work, no matter what that is – short term casual, part time, low paid whatever. And of course that then imposes activity requirements on people who are medically perhaps not capable, in many cases, certainly not capable of meeting those requirements. That means they are at risk or losing their payment for 8 weeks at a time by having a participation failure imposed upon them.

Michael Raper: It's a central issue of concern arising from the casework that we do in the Welfare Rights Centre in Sydney and indeed in all of the Welfare Rights centres throughout the National Welfare Rights network and that is across the country. One of the cases in the Ombudsman's report highlighted the example of a person who was actually in the Centrelink queue to hand in a form under their activity requirements because they were on New Start allowance rather than a disability payment. They had an epileptic seizure in the queue, paramedics were called in to treat the person, they informed Centrelink that the person was on the floor and unable actually to hand in the form and fulfil their requirements. Nevertheless the person got breached, that is they had a participation failure as they are called recorded against them so their payment was suspended. And that's only valid to do that if the person has 'no reasonable excuse'.

Natasha Mitchell: A seizure at a Centrelink office surely constitutes an excuse.

Michael Raper: And an obvious one, but they nevertheless had to appeal and even after appealing the participation failure was not lifted, they actually had to go to the Ombudsman in order to get an intervention that finally resulted in Centrelink lifting that. Now that's taking this you know whole harsh Work First approach I think to extremes – it's ridiculous. [link]