Recently in Science Category
Apparently because scientists think men won't take it. According to an article in Science Progress, outdated ideas of who's responsibility birth control and contraception is, has put the burden on women's shoulders.
Let's pretend you are a straight couple, in a monogamous long-term relationship, and you don't want a kid. Consider your options: A woman can choose from 11 forms of contraception -- including barrier methods like the diaphragm, permanent sterilization, and that holy grail of the sexual revolution, the pill, and its more recent and even more foolproof sisters in hormonal birth control, the ring and injectibles. A man can choose two: condoms or a vasectomy.
Right, so according to science, if you are woman it is your problem if you get pregnant or end up with an STD, so it just makes sense if you take care of the birth control. Doesn't sound very scientific does it. Furthermore, the financial burden, time constraints and side effects of hormonal birth control on women has another implication on not only time, but unfair burden.
Via Lisa Campo-Engelstein at Science Progress
Not being responsible for some or all of these economic, health-related, and other burdens is a significant boon for men. Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent (often monthly, or at least four times a year) supply of contraceptives, acquire the knowledge about contraception and reproduction needed to effectively contracept, deal with the medicalization of one's reproductive health, endure the bodily invasion of contraception, suffer the health-related side effects and the mental stress of being responsible for contraception, and face the social repercussions of their contraceptive decisions (such as whether to use a particular contraceptive or to switch contraceptives), and the moral reproach for contraceptive failures.
What both Lisa Campo-Engelstein from Science Progress and Amy Benfer at Broadsheet acknowledge is that this outdated ideology not only leads to the false belief that men wouldn't take contraception, but also leads to a disempowerment of men taking responsibility for contraception. As in, they benefit from the structural belief that it is a woman's responsibility and it is a lose-lose all around. To counter that narrative would take a leap of faith on behalf of women and an insistence by the science community around the effectiveness of male birth control and the corresponding research, development and distribution of such measures. So, it is possible, but sex education, the science community and health care providers would have to overcome the sexism endemic in the way we teach and distribute contraception.
ABC News reports on a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University which supposedly determined that women with higher testosterone levels "take more risks and are more likely to choose a finance career." Testosterone levels made no difference in men's career choices in the study. The sample size was 500 graduate students.
I know that hormones play a real role in our behavior--no matter our sex--but these kinds of studies worry me. It feels as if isolating only one factor like this, especially one so biologically-determined, underplays all of the other huge influences on how we choose careers, get educated, seek mentors, develop an identity, determine our own gifts etc. The socialization, for example, that we experience as a result of our socioeconomic class, seems like a far greater influence on whether we see ourselves as "fit" for a career in finance, than whether we have a slightly higher testosterone level.
Which is all to say--okay, do the hormonal studies, but don't forget to couch them in the context of what I see as far more powerful social, economic, and psychological factors. Your thoughts?
According to the New York Times, Gold medalist Caster Semenya, a track and field phenom from South Africa, is undergoing sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility to race as a woman. The testing is being conducted by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport's governing body.
There is plenty of useless speculation and a few fucked up quotations in the article from other athletes:
"These kind of people should not run with us," Elisa Cusma of Italy, who finished sixth, said in a postrace interview with Italian journalists. "For me, she's not a woman. She's a man."Mariya Savinova, a Russian who finished fifth, told Russian journalists that she did not believe Semenya would be able to pass a test. "Just look at her," Savinova said.
Of course sex can not be determined by looks alone, and gender is not something that we get to decide for others, as Cusma suggests. "These kinds of people" is language taken straight from the bigot's handbook. I think both of these athletes should be asked to do an empathy-determination test, not to mention be schooled in sex, gender, and biology.
Their first reading could be a new book by Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D.: Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of the Two Sexes. He reports that every year more than 65,000 children are born who aren't obviously either boys or girls. He writes, "In truth, humans come in an amazing number of forms, because human development, including human sexual development, is not an either/or proposition. Instead, between 'either' and 'or' there is an entire spectrum of possibilities.'" The book is really beautifully written, highly accessible, and visionary in its own right. For more on this topic, I also suggest Anne Fausto-Sterling.
The ambiguity of sex may not even be at play with Caster Semenya, but the public's reaction to her performance and body are flash points for our continued discomfort with admitting that the world does not come in such simple dichotomies as we safely like to think it does. My heart goes out to Semenya, who meanwhile has to deal with this shit instead of celebrating her victory and reveling in the moment.
Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, appropriately, has the last word in the NYT article, and I'll give it to her here as well: "At the end of the day, they are going to have to make a social decision on what counts as male and female, and they will wrap it up as if it is simply a scientific decision. And the science actually tells us sex is messy. Or as I like to say, 'Humans like categories neat, but nature is a slob.' "
Thanks to so many readers for the heads up.
A group of Amazonian ants have evolved an extremely unusual social system: They are all female and reproduce via cloning. Though their sexual organs have virtually disappeared, they have also gained some extraordinary abilities.University of Arizona biologist Anna Himler orginally began studying the ants, called Mycocepurus smithii, because they had incredible success as farmers. Many breeds of ant keep domesticated "farms" where they breed various kinds of fungus for nourishment. But Mycocepurus smithii was able to breed fungus far more successfully, and in greater varieties, than other ants Himler had encountered.
As she and her team studied the insects, they realized there were no male ants anywhere to be found. Himler told the BBC that it's possible the ants evolved so as "not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction."
That is kind of amazing. How much you want to bet this is what anti-feminists imagine we feminists want to be able to do?
