Twitter Fight Club and Gender #TFC14

[Note: If you want to understand this post at all and are new to Twitter Fight Club, I strongly recommend you read this FAQ post by Hayes Brown and also follow him @HayesBrown]

I’ve never gotten super into basketball, and my beloved UMass Lowell Riverhawks lost in the Elite 8 in hockey this year (*wipes tears*), so all of my March Madness energy has been channeled into a quirky competition known as Twitter Fight Club. I even had the opportunity to judge a round this year, an opportunity that @PTSDInfo wrote about in the Huffington Post. You can read my scathing reviews of the great minds of National Security here.

Kelsey (@AthertonKD) is competing in the finals today against our dear friend Daveed (@DaveedGR), which sparked a conversation at home for us about gender representation in NatSec Twitter. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at gender in Twitter Fight Club since its 2011 inaugural season. Since Kelsey had his big fight today, and I’m usually the one who does gender (get it?), I volunteered to do the dirtydata work.

Before I dive in, I also want to say a note about language. I chose to use the terms “woman” and “man” because I don’t really care so much about biological sex, but the gender perceived by third parties. I wasn’t going to be asking anyone point blank about their gender for two reasons: a) because that’s rude to do to strangers and b) if I can’t perceive their gender, other competitors probably can’t perceive their gender, and therefore, it’s probably not affecting the overall gender climate of the competition.

To be honest, I think gender looks a lot more like this, but I wasn’t going to be able to ask all 64 competitors from every year to draw themselves as a gingerbread person, so here we are.

My methods were this: I found lists of every competitor of every TFC match, and did research (through Twitter or asking one of my trusted sources who may know them offline) if they knew their gender off hand. If my immediate searches were gender-less, I did not include them in the results one way or the other. I assigned perceived women with a 1, and perceived men with a 0, because that’s a fun excel trick to make averages super easy. It wasn’t a political statement, I swear.

"Then @AthertonKD is a zero…oh no you're not, sweetie, you're my hero!"

— althea may 🚌 💕 (@alymaybe) April 2, 2014

I repeated these steps for each match, and then made a graph showing the percentages of competitors by gender for each year.

Here’s #TFC14.

Started with a gender disparity, got a little worse, then there was a 50/50 split, and then back to the patriarchy an all-male championship.

Then this was last year, the year when a woman (@TexasInAfrica) won it all:

In 2012, things were a little worse…

But the first year had the worst gender diversity of all.

 

The bottom line is this: I think things are getting better for the women of NatSec Twitter, but there is still some room for improvement.

I opted not to put my individual spreadsheets up because I didn’t want to have mis-gendered someone that I couldn’t have confirmed with someone or something, or have someone wonder why theirs was left off if I was unable to Gender ID them. If you have any questions about it, I’m happy to talk over email, especially if it’s about your own status in our data. If you want me to republish stats with new info- also happy to do that.

Some shortcomings for this afternoon project? I can’t stress enough, this was a pretty cisgender-focused lens. If folks don’t identify as one gender binary over another, that was not represented because we went by genders represented on social media as perceived by third parties, not necessarily self-ID’d gender. Competitors also did not ID themselves when I sent out a blanket ask to everyone… well…correction: only one person (publicly) ID’d themselves, but it was not in any gender scale my training in gender studies has taught me:

https://twitter.com/brettfriedman/status/451367310708969472

Some DMs allowed clarification to what gender this individual wanted to be represented as for statistical purposes.

There’s a lot more that can be done with gender and TFC data (I keep coming up with ideas!), but this was the place to start. I want to give a special thanks to @AthertonKD for being a collaborator for this project, all while fighting a #1 seed for the title and taking care of me while I’m sick, and also to @caidid and @AnniesPerson for help and pointers along the way.

❤ @Alymaybe
PS- I always try to add visual accessibility brackets to my photos, but I wasn’t sure how to best do that with a graph. If you need accommodations, please email me at Alymay.Sellars@gmail.com and I’ll try my best to do what I can! Also if you have tips for the future, I’d love to hear them!

 

Chile Peppers? In My Vagina?

{Graphic: “Centipedes? In my vagina?” meme photoshopped to say “Chile peppers? In my vagina?” instead}. Photoshopping credit: Kelsey Atherton.

My partner is a native New Mexican. He loves cooking things with green chile. This was dinner last week.

{photo: red and green chile vegetarian enchiladas}

Yum.

And chiles also aren’t just for food. They’re also good for arthritis pain (just ask Piper on Orange is the New Black).

But there’s one place I do not want chiles. And given that this is a feminist health blog, it’s not hard for you to guess where.

This post has been making the rounds on Tumblr. Apparently, capsaicin (a derivative of chile peppers) may be an ingredient of Trojan Fire & Ice condoms, but nobody really knows for sure.

Trojan Fire & Ice will make things hot…a little too hot. These condoms will spice up your sex life…in all of the wrong ways. Instead of clearing your sinuses, it’ll clear…you know what, we’re not going to go there.

The sexual health expert in me was naturally curious about whether chile peppers are often used in vaginas. Though I learned that apparently orally consuming a high-chili diet can change one’s vagina’s pain threshold during vaginal “self-stimulation” (and apparently Columbia University is considering? was considering? a study using capsaicin to help with labor and delivery), most of the Google results were basically “ouch” (and a snarky Jezebel article), and rightfully so. It’s chile peppers, and we know how that feels when we get them in our eyes, and vaginas are mucus membranes. I can do the math.

I’m not a doctor, so I don’t really know the research on the safety of vaginal capsaicin. But wouldn’t it be great if we knew exactly what was in the condoms we buy? After all, I can run to my bathroom and check the ingredients of the many lotions, soaps, and shampoos we have on hand, and most people don’t even (usually) use those internally. But as I’ve written before, the FDA does not require that condoms publish all of their ingredients (even if we know they can cause yeast infections), just a few select ingredients, like whether it has (potentially harmful) spermicide and the body of the condom (latex, lambskin, polyisoprene, etc).

If the consumer had the power to look at the back of a box and say, “hey, what causes this “Fire& Ice” sensation? Oh it’s capsaicin? No chile peppers for me!”, we could have much more autonomy over our health. But instead, we have to rely on reports from Tumblr, Condom Depot, and other third-party accounts to speculate what we’re putting in our bodies.

So-called “stern” warnings from the FDA are not enough. We need stricter label regulation now.

Vaginas, mouths, and rectums everywhere depend on it.

Beyond Birth Control: This is About Workers’ Rights

(note: I tried my best in this piece to use gender-neutral language when talking about pregnant people, respecting that some transmen become pregnant.)

{Photo: Thigh tattoo- bouquet of red/orange roses and wheat, wrapped in a newspaper, with a banner that says “Lowell Offering”}

I went to college in Lowell, Massachusetts- the birthplace of the American industrial revolution, about 45 minutes drive from where I grew up. As a child, I loved going to the Lowell National Historical Park, and even went to “Boott Camp” a few summers, where I first became interested in Gender Studies. It is, in many ways, the roots of my feminist and workers’ rights beliefs, and it’s no wonder why UMass Lowell has a great research Center for Women and Work.

Lawrence is just down the Merrimack River from Lowell. Lawrence is famous for its 1912 Bread and Roses Strike, named after the poem by James Oppenheim, which partly inspired the tattoo above (along with The Lowell Offering, which was published by mill workers and is theorized to have possibly inspired Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol). A few years after the strike, my great-grandmother worked in those mills. And just this week, I read in an adorable Margaret Sanger biography that Sanger had helped as a nurse during Bread and Roses. She even got her political start testifying before congress about these conditions. So, it’s not just me, thinking about birth control on those streets. Birth control renegades have been at the core of workers’ rights for over 100 years.

Oral arguments were heard in Sibelius v. Hobby Lobby yesterday, which concerns employers and the Affordable Care Act’s $0 copay birth control mandate. I spent yesterday morning protesting (in the snow!) with many other activists in front of the Supreme Court building.

Here’s a picture of me at the rally, with Pillamina, a Planned Parenthood mascot of Romney-campaign-following fame:

{photo: a woman dressed a pack of birth control pills with a Planned Parenthood logo hat poses for a photo with author of this blog, in the snow, bundled for the cold.}

Of course, any rally with “birth control” in the title can usually get me out of bed early on a snow day. But here’s the thing. The Hobby Lobby may be about birth control at face value, but it isn’t just about birth control. Hobby Lobby is a corporation that employs 21,000 people seeking to impose its religious beliefs about contraception on others, by dictating how employees spend their money, or their premiums on plans that do not cover contraception.This may also violate these 21,000 employees’ religious beliefs, as 47 nationally-recognized religions stated access to contraception is a moral good, including mine, which passed this resolution in the 80s.

 

If the court rules in Hobby Lobby’s favor, the results could go far beyond people paying copays on their contraception. Many religions are morally opposed to vaccines- and workplaces especially need those herd immunities. Blood transfusions also may not be covered because of an employer’s beliefs. Furthermore, other employment laws may come into question. Many experts fear anti-gay discrimination could be ruled constitutional.

It’s hard to say exactly how far the workers-oppression-rabbit-hole would go, but I think it is certainly an interesting coincidence that the oral arguments were heard on the 103rd anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which inspired much the workers’ rights legislation over the last 100 years, and we still have work to do there, too. While one is an issue of day-to-day safety and the other an issue of how a worker lives their life outside of the workplace, the core issue for both is respecting each worker’s inherent worth and dignity as a person. That sure sounds like a moral value to me. Oh wait, that’s the 1st Principle of my religion.

I hope that the Supreme Court takes this anniversary seriously and stands on the side of workers.

Date With DC: Liz Comes to Town!

My dear friend Liz is in town for a few days, and it’s nice to have an excuse to do tourist things! This is the first time I’ve hosted someone here, so I’ve been having a blast pretending I’m already a settled local. Yesterday was extra-special and I hit new territory for me, so I decided that it counts as a Date with DC.

We started our day at the National Museum of the American Indian, which most locals will tell you is the best food on the mall. After treating ourselves to a great lunch, we walked around the exhibits, which was very eye-opening. During my first trip to NMAI last August, I was embarrassed by how little I knew of our country’s history, so I strongly recommend visiting this museum if you get the chance.

Here’s the obligatory picture of owl artifacts because I’m in love with them.

{photo: an exhibition case with several artifacts depicting owls}

We then went on a walk, which passed the Newseum. This museum costs about $20 to visit and we were on a budget, but you can see one of the coolest parts- a newspaper’s cover page from every state and several countries.

{Photo: the cover of the Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ newspaper. The headline says “Roch of Ages”}

We ended up near Chinatown, and after grabbing the obligatory Dunks that us Boston folks run on, went to the Reynolds Center, which houses the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Unless I happened to go on our DC trip when I was 9 (I don’t remember. Mom?), this was my first visit. If we’re friends in real life I’ll direct you over to the photo album where I uploaded tons of pictures, but here were a few of my highlights:

{Photo: an art project that depicts the Preamble of the US Constitution on a series of license plates from the 50 states, in alphabetical order. Spelled weird and phonetically because they’re on license plates, so it may take a minute for an onlooker to realize that it is the Preamble and read it all}

{photo: Kuniyoshi’s painting entitled “Strong Woman and Child”, which depicts a curvy woman in tight, athletic clothes holding hands with a young child}

{photo: Liz stands next to a portrait of Katharine Hepburn and behind four Oscar trophies in a glass case}

Liz was excited to see “the Oscars”.

There’s a beautiful covered courtyard in the middle of the Reynolds Center, which is definitely worth a few minutes break during a museum trip.

{photo: Alymay sits next to yellow flowers}

{photo: Liz sits next to the same flowers!}

We headed back home, where we met up with some of our friends and walked to Fort Reno in Tenleytown for the sunset, where we enjoyed a picnic snack in the lovely sweater weather. I fell a little extra in love with DC yesterday, and I hope to keep our romance blossoming in spring.

❤ ams

 

BPA-Free Plastics, Condoms, and the FDA.

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how the pill is not to blame for the estrogen-mimicking agents (or xenoestrogens, in cool-science terms)  in our water. While I believe that EE2 is not to blame for the high levels of estrogen in our water supply, I feel strongly that we must limit the unintended estrogen-mimickers we encounter.

According to a 2011 study recently made the cover story in the latest Mother Jones (by Mariah Blake) – many of the BPA-Free plastics may mimic estrogen the same way as BPA, making it still very damaging. And from the looks of the Blake article, there has been some potential foul play on behalf of the American Chemical Council.

Keep in mind, this is the same organization that tried to tell us in this YouTube video that phthalates are safe.

Yeah, I think that’s hogwash- just look at this publication from my alma matter. But I digress.

One of the side effects known to estrogen-mimickers is vaginal tumors. As a sex educator, you know where my mind went immediately- sexual health. Many people use plastic sex toys in their vaginas and/or rectums. We are sticking these potentially cancer-causing agents into parts of our body that are highly susceptible. 

Some quality sex toy companies like Good Vibrations have taken special care to only sell safe or warn clients about the dangers of sex toys, but the recent publication of Blake’s article may cause these private companies and nonprofit organizations to take alerting the public into their own hands, though really this should all be coming from the FDA.

And I would say, “don’t worry, friends, just pop a condom over your toys,” but the FDA doesn’t require that condom companies publish their lubricants’ ingredients, beyond spermicide. We don’t really know what’s in that, either. If we have to put the ingredients on a shampoo bottle that we put in our hair, we should know what we are putting in our mouths, vaginas, or rectums. In the name of safety. Don’t worry- some condom companies like Sir Richard’s have made commitments to be choosier about their ingredients, or at least disclose whether or not they’re vegan.

I think the next few weeks are going to be really telling. This is not the last we are hearing of this. But one thing is for certain- the FDA could stand to step up their “protecting the public” game.

EDIT: If you are interested in the products in question, the Center for Environmental Health has more information here. 

Big Red Buttons and Little Red Dots: Why It’s Time To Stop Menstrual Shame

{Accessibility caption: graphic explaining the phases of the menstrual cycle based on ovarian histology, body temperature, hormones, and endometrial histology. It’s a shameless tactic by author to make it look science-y, but folks who want more explanation on the graphic can find info on the Wikipedia page}

{Another aside: I use the term woman and some she/her/hers pronouns in this piece for a few examples, but I want to publicly acknowledge that not everyone with a uterus identifies as a woman}

When I was 11 years old, I joined the ranks of reproductive aged female-bodied folks and started bleeding once a month (or in my case because my natural cycle is an ovary-chiever, every 3 weeks for six or seven days, clockwork. Birth control was a nice change for me). I remember wanting to tell everyone about what was going on because I was physically uncomfortable and it was constantly on my mind. The pads felt so big for my barely pubescent body and I was worried that everyone could see them. It generated a lot of stress for me, but I soon learned how to deal with periods like a champion. Or like the vast majority of other female-bodied folks in America.

A thought that I had to myself three days post-menarche has stuck with me for over half of my life now. While I knew about periods from a biological standpoint, and I knew the value that young girls place on menstruation from reading lots of Judy Blume books, nobody talked about it, really. Sure, my mom and older sister answered my questions, but if every reproductive aged female-bodied person in my life were going through this once a month, I figured I would have heard about it more. There was so much shame over something that was, to me, just utterly inconvenient. I wondered if it would be that way if men menstruated, too. We all could sync up and complain together. Misery loves company, and maybe people wouldn’t be so silent.

Sure, there’s plenty of historical context of menstrual shame, but there’s one modern myth keep us silent about when we have our period- the trope of women being moody and unstable while menstruating. Sure, hormones can affect the brain and the annoyance of needing to take care of remembering to deal with tampons (or Softcups, for all you menstruating, non-IUD-having folks) can get obnoxious. But it’s certainly not so consuming that we can’t do our normal, daily functions. We inflate this inconvenience into something it’s not- and gender could not be closer to the core of this issue.

How many times have we all heard the joke that a woman can’t be president because she’d want to nuke random countries with that comically giant red button on her desk every month? When women are upset, “oh she’s just having her period” like that dismisses their concerns as unimportant. When we repeatedly tell women that they can’t express opinions for the 1/4 of their daily life that they are menstruating, we discount their opinions all of the time. It’s our discounting of her emotions as just a side effect of hormones that allow us to dismiss her thoughts. It’s not menstruation that keeps women from being president, it’s our refusal to acknowledge that women can have rational thoughts while simultaneously experiencing a normal bodily function. Men sometimes have erections at inconvenient times, after all.

But periods are such an easy scapegoat at letting us keep women out of power!

<3ams

PS- For the sake of reducing menstrual shame, I feel like I need to disclose that I started my period in the middle of writing this. My body has a great sense of humor.

In Defense of J.K. Rowling

I came across an interesting headline today from novelist Lynn Shepherd: “If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It”

I read the article and could not disagree more.

For starters, would she write this to Stephen King? Or Terry Pratchett? Or any other man who might have written more or for longer? Just imagine if someone told William Shakespeare to clear the air for a while.

I digress.

Shepherd writes that she’s upset that adults were reading the Harry Potter books instead of more intellectually stimulating material while in fact, she’s never read them.

I personally don’t believe that the worth of a piece is at all correlated with the easiness of the material. It’s the art of how they are told and the lessons within them that count.

For example, I would be surprised if a literary critic denied that The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is worth reading (seriously, go read it), yet its language and story is clearly geared towards children and is much more simple than the Harry Potter series. I sometimes re-read this book as an adult to remind myself of important lessons about love, greed, and listening to children. I am so openly in love with this book I even got The Little Prince board game for Christmas from my partner.

It’s also strange that she implies somehow that we are reading only J.K. Rowling at the expense of other authors. Sure, bands geared towards teens like One Direction dominate the musical sphere. But we wouldn’t accuse them of suffocating more “sophisticated” musicians. It’s all art. We are capable of consuming the work of more than one artist, writer, or musician. The more art we are exposed to, the more beautiful our lives become.

I didn’t read as much as I had hoped after college, but I recently read The Fault in Our Starsby John Green, which is a young adult novel. I laughed, cried, and hung onto every word. But something happened with that book. I finished it in a day and immediately started reading more books- many more geared towards adults, but a few good young adult novels, too. Far from the library I call home, I started going to one in DC. I felt like a child rediscovering reading for pleasure again, and kept reading more and more. I would be shocked if Harry Potter didn’t rekindle love affairs of reading for thousands of adults, who probably bought more books from other authors after they finished or between releases. 

Samantha Dolan reminded us of this quote on the piece’s Facebook thread from a great author:

 “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

I couldn’t agree more.

The Harry Potter series was completed while I was still in high school, but I find myself as an adult going back to stories from those pages. Sure, other books have had a more profound impact on my life, but I’m glad that I read them. If one of my adult friends told me they hadn’t read them yet, I would strongly encourage them to do so.

Keep writing if you’d like, J.K. Rowling. The world needs your voice and hopefully your work will remind others to seek out the work of other writers as well.

I Want To Support Your Cause…But Not Your Catcall

I have a hard time saying “no” when people ask me to donate money for things. When I had a steady income, it was easy for me to say – “I made x amount of dollars this week, I can totally give $10 to _________. That’s like two and a half lattes! I probably would have bought like three lattes this week if I lived closer to Starbucks. Done.”

Now that the paycheck is not coming at any particular time, I’ve had to tone it back a lot. Those lattes mean a lot more to me. I still want to help my friend Sophie raise money for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center- I’m even in her fundraising picture (please donate if you can!), and I want to help all of my friends raise money for their Abortion Bowl-A-Thons (DC page here, Eastern Massachusetts page here– again- please donate if you can!), but until I’m employed, I have to say “no”- for now. It’s a skill I’ve had to learn quickly in this time of less financial flexibility.

One thing is making this task easier for me. The ways people ask for donations  in DC is frankly abhorrent.

Some try to appease my (presumably) feminist sensitivities:

“You look like someone who ummmm…. really cares about the education of young girls!”

Was this because I have a pixie cut or because I look like a decent human?

But most of the time? They use the same tactics of street harassers.

“Hey girl, you’re looking fine today. Dammmn. Can I talk to you about ____________?”

Sometimes calling out my distinct features:

“Hey! Love your red hair! And the flower you put in it? You’re so gorgeous!”

And the most creepy I’ve gotten so far:

“Hey! You! In the pink pants! Oooh, I love your style. I have a question! What’s the least racist animal! The panda! It’s black, white, *and* it’s Asian!” and before I could ask, “what about the plights of Native Americans? or Hispanic Americans?” he jumped in with,  “you have really pretty eyes! And hair!”

Unacceptable.

And most of these are causes that would usually have my ear, they just can’t if I feel like my body or the way I dress is a topic of discussion. I’m not looking for the reminder, as a woman, that my body is always on display, always being judged, and the first thing people talk about when they engage with me. I am not your commodity, and you don’t want me thinking I am. Trust me- I don’t want to be thinking about my body when I’m thinking about giving you a $25 monthly recurring donation. Besides,  if you’re fundraising for a nonprofit, my body isn’t what you’re looking for. You’re really trying to go after my wallet.

If you wanted to lead with, “Did you know that *statistic about cause*? Want to hear what we’re doing about it?” I’d have a lot more trouble saying no. Or “Do you have a minute for *organization*?” if you have a big enough name. Though I don’t have the money to be donating right now (and I usually check things on Charity Navigator before I actually give them more than a few dollars), I’d be happy to listen to your pitch and maybe when I have money, be tempted to donate and not cross your org off my donation list.

I’m not going to listen to your pitch if you’re not making me feel safe.

I know a lot of times, these are tactics to get us engaged in conversation with you before the big pitch. They seem like easy tricks to get the ball rolling. But here’s the thing. Canvassers don’t exactly have the OPSEC of undercover cops. If you’re holding a clipboard and the same shirt as the person standing with a clipboard across from you, we know you’re asking for either money or signatures. We know you’re talking to us about some cause that our heart will undoubtedly bleed for, and if we’re ready to hear it, we’ll engage with you, and if not, we aren’t interested. Maybe we’re late for an appointment and were going to look your cause up later. Do you want your one sentence to be, “you are so pretty!  Love those eyes!” or “*Cool fact*! Can you help *organization* today?”

You must either care enough to volunteer or be paid enough that you are willing to stand in the cold for hours on end. Don’t end up hurting more than you help.

Dating DC on Valentine’s Day

I am super blessed to have a live-in relationship with my amazing partner. He’s the kind of guy that you can spend 10 minutes talking sarcastically like y’all actually agree with anything said in this article, knowing that he agrees it’s a load of baloney. That’s love. We spend our days and nights together, as I apply jobs while he writes from home, switching from work to fun mode at 6 or 7 PM every day, which is really too late to do a lot of things outside in the winter.

Because I’ve been in job-search frenzy mode until it’s dark outside, I haven’t gotten as many chances to explore this beautiful city as I would like. I decided that I deserve breaks sometimes, and I want to start going on a series of dates with DC, while I’m still in flexible “funemployment” mode. The first was yesterday. I started down the street from our apartment- at the zoo!

Naturally, I started with the Giant Pandas. Though Bao Bao was in a special room not viewable to the public, I got to hang out with mom, Mei Xiang.

{photo: giant panda curled up in a corner}

Then, I visited the elephant house. I was the only person in the room for a while, so maybe I got to talk to the elephants without alarming other guests. I made sure to tell them that I loved them and I was sad that a political party I widely disagree with has used them as a mascot.

{photo: two elephants in profile standing in gigantic doorways to the outside, facing the same direction}

Perhaps the most special moment for me was getting up close with a burrowing owl, which was super adorable (with a glass wall between us, of course).

I had some feelings…

I'm sorry @athertonkd – I found another Valentine today. It's a burrowing owl and I love it. pic.twitter.com/M0HVR9LcUy

— althea may 🚌 💕 (@alymaybe) February 14, 2014

and they confused some of my friends…

@alymaybe @AthertonKD Step. Away. From. The. Diorama.

— Melanie Morel-Ensminger (@RevMelanieNOLA) February 14, 2014

I cleared up that it was actually a live owl that was behind a glass wall and being adorable.

They also have some barnyard animals at the zoo.

{photo: a black and white cow drinking from a bucket}

So cute. After an overpriced snack at the  Mane Grill, I ventured to say hi to some tigers.

{photo: a Sumatran tiger cub sits in profile near a tree, you can see a larger tiger  in the back of the photo, and can just barely see the other cub}

After my zoo adventure, I decided to see something I hadn’t seen since moving to Washington, DC- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, The White House.

On the walk over on G Street, I saw some great plaques memorializing people who went “The Extra Mile”. Rachel Carson has always been a hero of mine, so I snapped a photo.

{photo: a plaque on the ground recognizing Rachel Carson’s work}

And the White House looked gorgeous as ever after our snow day on Thursday.

{Photo: the back of the White House with snow on the ground}

Someone was even there to wish President Obama a happy valentine’s day.

{photo: a woman wearing a red scarf and red gloves holds a large sign written in red on a white board with a red heart, which says, “Happy Valentine’s Day Mr. President, We  ❤ You.”}

Next, I headed to the Capitol Building so I could see the dome before the scheduled reconstruction.

{photo: the back of the US Capitol Building, with snow on the ground}

At this point, my legs were pretty tired, so I headed back to our place, right when my partner was getting off work. We decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day in style with champagne (from New Mexico, of course) on our roof deck. He even wore a top hat.

{photo: a selfie of a woman in a badger hat leaning on a man in a top hat, both smiling at the camera}

It was a beautiful date with DC indeed. I’m taking suggestions for my next date with DC! Leave a comment if you have a good one.

❤ ams

How To Talk About Our Lower Abortion Rates Without Throwing Abortion Under the Bus

You may have heard the news- abortion rates are on the decline. This is no surprise to people who work in the field. People are using LARCs (long-acting reversible contraception- the most effective reversibles on the market) at twice the rate they were in 2002. For the reproductive justice community, this is a victory in many of our eyes. We’ve said it over and over again- the lower abortion rate is thanks to contraception access, not anti-abortion legislation. Overall, it’s a good thing that people are using contraception, thus reducing unplanned pregnancies- of which, four in 10 end in abortion.  Plus, with the elimination of co-pays for birth control under the Affordable Care Act, I bet we’ll see the number of unplanned pregnancies, and therefore abortions, decline even more.

The problem is here: when the pro-choice community uses rhetoric that makes abortion seem like something that needs to be reduced (remember “safe, legal, and rare“?), it makes it easier for the average American to stomach restrictions from the right- mandatory ultrasounds, gestational age limits, waiting periods, etc.  Many of these restrictions may seem arbitrary to people who are not/have not been in these situations. What anyone who works with abortion can tell you how these restrictions wouldn’t do as much to deter pregnant people as to make more arbitrary processes for a time-sensitive procedure. These bills gain traction from the same “rare” rhetoric that was used in the past to say, “I want it to be safe and legal, but don’t worry- it’s going to be rare.” The rare part stigmatizes a very normal experience for Americans . About half of all female-bodied folks will experience an unintended pregnancy by 45. Three in 10 will experience an abortion by age 45.

Celebrate contraception’s affect on lowering our unintended pregnancy rates. Tell everyone you know that it’s going to get even better under the Affordable Care Act. Just not at the cost of letting other abortion restrictions slide by the public in the name of “rare”.