Blogs Comment On Cultural Notions Of Virginity, Hormone Replacement, Other Topics

The following summarizes selected women's health related blog entries.

~ "Virginity Around the World," Silvana Naguib, American Prospect's "Tapped": After reviewing customs and cultural expectations related to virginity in Arab countries, India and the U.S., Naguib writes that "cultural emphasis on virginity hurts girls and women, placing undue emphasis on an existential state of 'purity' rather than encouraging safe behavior." She notes that in some Arab countries, a woman is expected to "physically demonstrate [virginity] by experiencing tearing and bleeding on her wedding night," leading some women to "pay thousands of dollars to modify their genitals." In the U.S., Naguib says, "[w]e still have federal funding for abstinence-only education, which emphasizes purity as the path to the greatest happiness and health." She adds that on the Internet "[w]e still have young women auctioning off their virginity to the highest bidder, receiving bids of thousands and even millions of dollars." Naguib continues, "By continuing to prize virginity, Americans support a violent narrative about young women and sex, increasing the value of their sexual purity only to gain power by depriving them of it." She writes, "Instead of focusing on virginity, we should conceive of whether people are 'sexually active,' since people go through different phases of sexual activity throughout their lives" (Naguib, "Tapped," American Prospect, 4/30).

~"Beyond Ovaries: Is There Room for Men in the Pro-Choice Movement," Feminists for Choice: The blogger, who identifies himself as "a gay pro-choice feminist, discusses Florida Rep. Janet Long's (D) comment that supporters of an antiabortion measure should "[s]tand down if [they] don't have ovaries." He writes, "I think it's important to recognize, especially as an arbiter of male privilege, that women have been marginalized in traditional legal discourse on abortion rights," but it is "problematic to assume that men have no responsibility or role in advancing reproductive justice in the United States." Because "men have traditionally occupied the social and political positions of power to authorize or limit women's reproductive choices, … it [is] perfectly understandable that many women have a problem with men dominating the conversation about women's reproductive choices," he continues. "It's important to point out this necessary distinction between 'men participating in the struggle for reproductive justice,' and 'men trying to make choices for women,'" the blogger writes. "In other words, men certainly have a place in the struggle for the right to choose; however, they have ZERO right to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies," he concludes (Feminists for Choice, 5/2).














~ "Oklahoma -- Not OK," Robin Lakoff, Huffington Post blogs: Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley, criticizes two recently enacted antiabortion laws in Oklahoma. The first law (HB 2780) "makes it mandatory for a doctor to show a woman requesting an abortion an ultrasound, along with an interpretation of it," while the second law (HB 2656) "indemnifies a doctor who has failed to inform a pregnant woman that the fetus she is carrying is defective," Lakoff writes. The two laws "deprive female human beings -- and only females -- of the ability to determine for themselves what they need to know and to be given the information they want, and only that information, in order to be in a position to make intelligent decisions concerning their bodies and their lives," according to Lakoff. She continues, "There is a presumption that women are so stupid, or so evil, that they cannot make proper use of information to which they are privy, as well as an assumption that they are too stupid or evil to have the right to determine for themselves what they want and need to know." The laws constitute a "return of 'don't bother your pretty little head about it' paternalism, only worse," she argues. "[T]hese laws should make it clear" that antiabortion-rights bills are not "first and foremost about protecting fetuses," she adds. Rather, such laws "are about returning women to age-old positions of subordination and male control, based on a biblical presumption that women are meant to be in such a status based on their inferiority to men," Lakoff writes (Lakoff, Huffington Post, 5/3).

~ "'The Estrogen Dilemma' and the Holy Grail of Menopausal Symptom Management," Patricia Yarberry Allen, Huffington Post blogs: Patricia Yarberry Allen, publisher of Women's Voices for Change, writes about a recent article in the New York Times Magazine by Cynthia Gorney exploring the "suffering experienced by some women during the perimenopausal transition" and Gorney's struggle with hormone therapy. Allen writes that "over the next few years," ongoing research into estrogen and hormone replacement "will begin to give us clues about the impact of hormone use on many clinical aspects of the lives of women who are symptomatic during some part of the menopausal transition." She adds, "Questions of benefit and risk in the use of hormone therapy will always be a part of the treatment decisions that the patient and doctor must make throughout the medical management of menopausal symptoms." While "[t]here will never be an easy answer" or a "right answer," the "conversation has been enlivened by Gorney's investigation into current hormone research and years of personal experience with the use of hormone therapy for the treatment of perimenopausal depression," she concludes (Allen, Huffington Post, 4/30).


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