Here is a picture of my friend Carrie’s puppy, Carmella, who is starting to feel neglected by her Toastie fans.
You HAVE to see Melanie Mark’s triumphant entrance as the first female First Nations MLA elected in British Columbia.
The Atavist has some great stories they’re showcasing for their anniversary (you get three free ones a month, so choose carefully!)
WELL, I learned a lot from this:
The USDA, in 1994, said that E. coli could no longer be in hamburger meat, and the industry went absolutely nuts. They sued the government, saying E. coli is a naturally occurring bacteria. To the government’s credit, they used science and the court agreed that the government had the power to do exactly what it did. And over time, that determination that E. coli was an adulterant worked its way through the system and got us to the place we are now.
yep (I’ve always been softer on the multi-with-folic-acid suggestions, because that really IS something that does the most good before you know you’re pregnant, but this is ridiculous):
The CDC isn’t alone in this recommendation: the Mayo Clinic, for one, also recommends that any sexually active woman not on birth control refrain from drinking. But “the risk is real, why take the chance” has such a historical stranglehold even on women who are already pregnant, whose risk level is not real but immediate; to extend this idea to women who might become pregnant just because they are alive and unmedicated—or to phrase the recommendation with a basic disregard for the facts of how women live—suggests the same old idea that all women are either future, current, past or broken incubators, and that is their body’s primary use.
Alexander Chee on giving historical fiction its due:
What I knew is that when I would describe the subject of my novel to friends—an opera singer in the court of France’s Second Empire is afraid her voice is cursed, dooming her to repeat the fates of her roles—they would look at me, confused, only to respond, “Oh, you’re writing a historical novel.” The only answer to such a question was yes, and yet I felt somehow misunderstood. Worse still was the trepidation in their eyes, as if I had announced that I was giving up years of hard work writing literary fiction to sell out and become a hack. I had inadvertently hit on a literary taboo.
The literary historical best-sellers of the 1990s were late to the game long owned by historical romance, a game which has confounded literary writers and publishers since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Historical romance novels were selling half a million copies in the 1840s when Nathaniel Hawthorne complained of the “hordes of scribbling women” and George Eliot skewered the type in her 1856 essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.”
Nikki and Linda’s chat about diversity in publishing:
According to the Lee & Low survey, 80% of publishing and review journal staff are white, 98.7% are cis, ~78% are cis women, 88.2% are straight, only 7.6% identify themselves as having a disability. In your opinion, what are some of the biggest reasons for the overwhelming whiteness in publishing?
Part of it is that publishing salaries are incredibly low for entry-level—my editorial assistant salary was less than $13.50 an hour, and that has not improved since I started some years ago. Without middle-class or greater resources to subsidize living in New York, where most of the publishing jobs are, it’s difficult to accept those wages in addition to the student loans associated with going to both a prestigious university and NYU or Radcliffe or Columbia publishing programs. So publishing’s whiteness is partly a class issue.
I appreciate Marcia Clark’s ability to empathize with people who are DEEPLY and REASONABLY suspicious of law enforcement and the justice system, and this piece really made her seem like a human to me (also, all I want is for Sarah Paulson to play me in a movie about my life) but, oh, man, the prosecution and the cops made such a hash of their case that the verdict really shouldn’t have been a shock to anyone:
With the Furhman tapes and all of the racially incendiary testimony that wound up coming in that should have never come in, I think they got to a point where they just couldn’t trust anything, they couldn’t believe anything without a reasonable doubt. And so that’s the verdict. Now, that played directly to the black experience, which is legitimate. We call it in legal circles “the race card,” but that pejorative sits on top of truth, of real truth, and we’re seeing it now on cell-phone cameras, with all the dashcam footage, surveillance footage, we’re seeing why. It works because there’s a truth there — because black men have been unjustly convicted and treated and mistreated by the police. And these shootings are a graphic illustration of why there’s this mistrust of law enforcement. And Johnnie [Cochran] knew it, and he played to it, and we knew what he was doing. But what do we do about that? He’s not wrong. It’s just not true in this case.
From our own Matt and Jaya, six magical food hacks:
This twat is trying to rise from the ashes:
But aside from those remarks, there’s no reference to Driscoll’s troubled and controversial history at Mars Hill. Indeed, there’s no direct mention at all of the megachurch he presided over for 18 years in Seattle, until snowballing allegations of plagiarism, emotional abusiveness and misogyny led him to resign in October 2014.
On a housekeeping note, when we did the redesign, we turned our ads down to a 1, basically, in terms of their presence on the site, and it’s been lovely for users, but we’re really hurting for revenue as a result (indie publishing revenues are down this quarter and the last quarter of 2015 for everybody, but this is the first month I’ve had to dip into my own funds to pay our bills for ages), and I’ve given our publishing company the go-ahead to take ads back up to a 4 or 5. This is a really necessary move for us, and I would ask that you be reasonably supportive of it. There should still be no auto-plays, and if one sneaks in, please email the link/screenshot to me, but there WILL be more ads visible on the site. If you decide to use an ad blocker, I’d appreciate a donation of $5 a month (Marco has returned recurring donation functionality to the donate page.)
Y’ALL. Disgusting piece of actual human trash Martin Shkreli is even worse than we thought: he and his company have no regard for DOGS either. (This is a slight exaggeration, but…) Check out this memo that has turned up thousands of emails from Turing Pharma about the price gouging on Daraprim. http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/sites/democr…
I’ll call special attention to the second-from-bottom bullet on page 2:
“On October 1, 2015, the Director of Specialty Pharmacy Development at Walgreens forwarded a request for financial assistance for a dog that had been prescribed Daraprim to treat its toxoplasmosis. The request stated: “I have an unusual request. There is a dog that is a patient and he needs Daraprim. He is obviously not covered by insurance … the cost of what was prescribed is $5,000 for this little guy.” Jon Haas, the Director of Patient Access at Turing, responded: “You can buy Pyramethamine/Sulfa [sic] combo pills from a vet meds website for about $80.”
>:(
“company executives anticipated a potential backlash in response to Daraprim’s price increase, but believed that physicians generally are not sensitive to price increases and that HIV/AIDS activists–while organized and vocal–could be managed.”
Manage this, you evil pricks.
As a semi-recent medical school graduate, the “physicians generally are not sensitive to price increases” really resonates. In medical school I received no training in how to manage prescription drug prices and if a patient asked me how much a drug cost the honest answer was “your guess is as good as, if not better, than mine”.
With regard to this issue, for the most part you learn from your patients. Meaning you prescribe something way more expensive when there is a more affordable, equally appropriate option, learn you messed up (which doesn’t always happen), and do better next time. But this means you are always a step behind.
People specifically trying to get doctors complicit in their money-making manueverings are going to be successful. They are a step ahead. They are focusing on how to make money 24/7.
This is a tricky enough issue even if all the actors in it had the public good, and the good of the patient, in mind. The fact that there are actors who don’t give a damn about either is tremendously depressing.
I basically assume anything prescribed to me will be expensive enough that I have to put it on a credit card– the one month I didn’t have insurance, my generic zoloft was $50+. Luckily, with insurance it’s much cheaper, but I just figure it’s all way too expensive.
That’s a great point.
I would encourage people to let their doctors know if the cost of a medication is proving too burdensome (they might have no idea), but sometimes there aren’t better options.
Hopefully the near unanimous dislike of Martin Shkreli can generate political will to improve the situation.
Aside: out of curiosity, I looked at the Walmart and Target’s $4 dollar generic prescription list. It doesn’t cover all medications, but I think (I hope?) it’s a good option as a place to pick up generics on the cheap. All things being equal, I would try to prescribe things on their forumlary. I never got any feedback from patients on using those services, so I can’t speak to how things actually turn out.
But also, as you might already know, generic Zoloft isn’t on either formulary. A lot of things aren’t: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/business/22gene…
Edit: I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s MAYBE a good thing to keep in mind?
He’s also taunting Ghostface Killa that he’s going to alter the Wu Tang he bought album to erase all of his vocals. In summary, he remains the worst.
Who taunts a man named Ghostface Killa? That sounds dangerous
Must have a bit of a crazy God complex.
I am HERE for any and all discussion of historical fiction, my one true love, and anyone who says it can’t be “literary” or whatever can bite me hard.
ALSO, The Cut ran a profile on the founder of Thinx. It is a bananas articl ehttp://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/thinx-miki-agrawal-c-v-r.html# wow.
And also, yesterday was my husband’s birthday! Been together five years and never once spent his birthday together. We are also 0 for 5 on Valentines and 1 for 5 on my birthday. Anniversaries we bat about 50%. Sometimes military life sucks rocks. (Most of the time.)
God fucking dammit here is a correct link http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/thinx-miki-agrawa… fucking hate this fucking piece of shit phone sometimes
And check out her rebuttal in the comments.
And so many employees pop-up to comment too! Like a directive went out the night before.
::shrug:: So?
Ooooh boy, defending yourself in the comments is never a good look.
I dunno, the article seemed really unfair, sexist, and mean. The employees showing up in comments isn’t totally unreasonable, especially given the tone of the piece, which had to have been a surprise. Some of the comments are out of control shitty too, which, what are you gonna do, internet, etc.
I think the article was certainly biased against her. However, that fact is not mutually exclusive from the idea that she might really be irritating in real life. I know a couple female “tech disruptors”/”entrepreneurs”/”lady bosses” and they all have similar mannerisms and phrases as Agrawal does in the article – and they are all varying levels of irritating. (One of them I love, but I have to tune her out on FB every so often. Another one of them I just cannot stand in person, but she’s charming on social media.)
Yeah, I get that people are annoying, but I think it’s worth noting that women in tech, who may or may not be emulating tech dudes, have a very different context for their behavior, and that any criticism of them is fundamentally different because they are women, and women in largely male-dominated fields. They aren’t the same, because culturally and kyriarchically they can’t be.
Good on her for pushing boldly into the traditionally male space of being an asshole start-up founder.
She’s nuts and honestly this interview has walked me back a bit from trying her product.
I want to clarify this a bit. I don’t hate the woman and the comments on that article went overboard on her, as happens any article about a woman on a non-toast website. I like the idea of them as a tampon alternative but when she started off on the things about cancer and tss it really showed her lack of knowledge of things that I think would be important for a menstrual product creator. It makes me question her ability to choose safe materials for her products and her whole research process.
Exactly. I’m uncomfortable with issues of pseudoscience and made up stats becoming an issue in a company trying to make periods less of a problem for women. I dislike fearmongering when it seems like an effort to subvert research and understanding. (And I was also irritated with the author’s failure to identify fistula correctly.)
She did say in comments though that the author misrepresented some of her facts, so I don’t know what to believe as far as that goes. Though, I was already having a bad feeling about the article overall when the author describes her as “utterly confident even in situations where she has no good reason to be.” What a shitty, nasty, gross, sexist thing to say about a woman entrepreneur. Plus, what does it even MEAN.
I read her comment and the fact she cited as an example of misrepresentation was how many pads and tampons are discarded. I know she said all the facts were misrepresented but I don’t think anyone cares if her numbers were wrong, few people can cite multiple numerical statistics off the cuff accurately. She did not really address the fear mongering message she was putting across about other products. I do see your point that the article writer takes some cheap shots.
I disagree. If you’re going to offer up empirical proof of your argument, even in an off-the-cuff conversation, your proof can’t be fake. You can say “There are a ton of plastic applicators that end up in dumps all over the world.” You can say “The sex trade isn’t just a problem in some nebulous ‘elsewhere’, it exists in the U.S. too.” But when you start attaching numbers to things, they need to be at least roughly accurate.
My point was more that when claiming she was misquoted on facts she focused on the number related facts and not the general fear mongering claims she was making which as your point shows are easier to get right since it is a general claim.
I think honestly for the fact she was correcting it doesn’t matter if that was just tampons or pads and tampons that’s a lot of waste. Waste is definitely a problem with female hygiene products that I think is generally acknowledged. What is definitely not a problem is tampon use being linked to cancer and 3 hour tss. That’s a much more damaging claim to get wrong.
I’m torn on this, because I’ve met so many people exactly like this in tech, who are absolutely “utterly confident even in situations where [they have] no good reason to be” and it drive me insane – being a great programmer, or being very charming, doesn’t inherently make you brilliant at anything else. Engineer’s disease is real, and obnoxious, and I wish that more entrepreneurs’ claims and behaviors were subjected to this type of scrutiny. But…the fact that they aren’t, and that this profile of a female serial entrepreneur is one of the few that actually treats the subject with this level of skepticism, makes me uncomfortable, because it does feel like she’s getting extra criticism that a dude wouldn’t in the same situation.
Yeah, like I said above, for a woman in tech or a woman entrepreneur, the context is different and the criticisms, even if they use the same words, are different as a result.
There was a general lack of knowledge of basic women’s health stuff on both sides of the article which is ridiculous!
Idk, I love my THINX, they’ve totally changed my periods in a great way, and until the article randomly dropped the “they say they’re about liberating women but they’re really shaming them by containing the mess” (Huh? Free bleeding is a great look for feminism but it’s UNCOMFY bros) I was enjoying finding out that she’s kinda cray. But then I read the comments and…eesh…guess I missed where I supposed to wind up hating her guts…
Yeah that part of the article was odd. Thinx, tampons, menstrual cups and pads etc. are no more shaming or oppressive than toilets or other things we use to contain other bodily fluids. I think it’s ok to say I don’t want to get blood on stuff without it being “i’m so unclean and a lesser human being” etc. etc.
HILARY MANTEL 4EVA!!!
I mean, the assertion that historical fiction can’t be literary is just…objectively wrong, right? Someone just mentioned Hilary Mantel, and there’s I, Claudius and, hell, A Brief History of Seven Killings, which was being discussed here yesterday, and about a million other examples. Historical fiction can’t be literary literary only if you first decide what is and is not literary and then decide that anything that’s literary isn’t historical fiction (or science fiction or romance or fantasy or any other genre).
And there’s a whole other debate about why “literary” is the be all and end all in the first place, which I say as someone who loves literary fiction.
This is one of those things like when people refer to things like scifi, fantasy, and horror as “genre fiction.” Like, dude, everything has a genre. All fiction. Non-fiction, too. That is how genre works.
I tried shelving my personal library by “literary” (aka shit i had to read for my english degree) and “genre” and quickly discovered that you know Borges is kind of hard to pinpoint and what about my copy of Jack Zipes’s French fairy tales. (ALSO gotta shout out to my favorite Monk Lewis for his horror-romance-fantasy-sort-of-mystery novel)
So, anyway, in summation: phooey to all that.
The Monk also counts as historical fiction, while we’re at it.
This is only partially on-topic, but I was reading a period romance novel last night and one of the characters said “What is love?” and my brain immediately went to the song from Night at the Roxbury, and my head started bopping. That made it a little hard to stay in the proper head space.
It really is impossible to avoid, isn’t it? *bops head*
It came on at the gym last night and I audibly cheered. I don’t even like the song THAT much, but just for nostalgia and the love of Night at the Roxbury…
I guess her work isn’t technically literary, in that it’s plot driven, but DOROTHY DUNNETT OVER EVERYONE
I AM READING “KING HEREAFTER” AND I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THE HISTORICAL MACBETH.
That is the only one of her books that I just enjoy, b/c she gets in, gets the job done, and is finished in one book. I kinda stopped reading her last series once it got to about 4 or 5 books. Yes, the merchant is very clever. Yes, he’s quite amoral. Yes, his wife recognizes this about him. Enough!
EXACTLY. “Daylight’s a wastin’, Dot. Can we GO now?”
Sure, but will he ever get the family that he craves???? Inquiring minds and all that.
I love Dunnett and yet I hated King Hereafter to the point where I just could. not. finish. Maybe it was just her fetish for “man falls for woman he knew as a child,” I don’t know, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I am 100% here for this comment/discussion. I read the entire Lymond series and then immediately re-read it because I didn’t understand most of it the first time.
I read Lymond over the course of several years (starting as a teenager) and just marveled at her writing/my confusion. I am considering undertaking the reread now… How did it work out for you?
Good! Knowing the whole plot (kind of) helped me pick up on the foreshadowing and the really subtle dynamics between certain characters. Plus having my phone handy to Google all the previously incomprehensible literary references made the rereading project easier.
On the other hand, I have zero plans to reread the Niccolo books.
Same, though that is largely because I read them as an adult. And because I like Gelis much more than Nicholas.
Seriously, a huge proportion of the literary canon, even the Dead White Men canon, is made of historical fiction. Shakespeare wrote a shitton of fictionalized histories! The Victorian authors of triple-decker novels wrote about historical events all the time! There isn’t even a “historical fiction” section in most bookstores, it’s so integrated into other genres, so I don’t know how people logistically manage to turn up their noses at it when it’s right there part of the soup with everything else.
and series! Shakespeare wrote series! One trilogy, even
Mary Renault, anyone?
Oof, yes.
“the small but beloved Toast”
I thought Toasties might like this article on the first female Anglo-Saxon scholar: http://www.historytoday.com/yvonne-seale/first-fe…
Hold up. Jaya are you pregnant??
HELL NO
Hahahahaha that response could not have been quicker or more emphatic.
Maybe the CDC should recommend that all women suspend a ripe avocado above their bellies before they drink alcohol to see if they’re pregnant …
I was drinking water when I read this, now I’m wearing it :
Proof of the dangers of being a drinking woman!!!
ilu Jaya, though I just sprayed coffee all over my desk
I have nothing but love in my heart for Pregnant-Americans, though I have no desire to be one
dude I was blessed with relatively easy pregnancies and uncomplicated births and I’m not tripping over myself to do it again
When my period’s late I occasionally think “Oh, wouldn’t it be FUN if I were pregnant!”…for about 10 seconds before Reality takes over.
Now I just wish for early menopause, you guys.
My mom’s was when she was 45 and I’m 36 and I’m all but counting down the days
You guys’ life hack strip made my day! Thx.
Don’t use adblocker personally, because I find I can read most any site without “seeing” ads using Reader in Safari (stories, articles, not home or landing pages), and my initial views or whatever they’re called get counted by the ads, too. /suggestion
That works until some idiot’s Flash/JavaScript animated abomination seizes up your whole computer whenever you try to load a page
Semi-pro tip. Disable Flash in Firefox, do your web browsing there. Flash is a terrible security risk anyway (one of the big scandals about private companies selling spyware to evil governments largely revolved around exploiting Flash). If you come to a page you absolutely need to load and it requires Flash, open it in Chrome, where Flash operates in a sandbox (security equiv of safer sex). In meantime you’re spared dreadful Flash features crashing your system!
I can’t watch the OJ series because it is still distressing. My husband was friends with Nicole Brown in high school. He remembers her as very sweet and he hates that she was put on trial instead of OJ.
That men still get away with abusing and killing women is the hissing shame of our civilization.
Once every few years over dinner my mom will reminisce about how horrifying the O.J. trial was to watch. I’m not sure if the conversation actually prompts it or if it just pops into her head and she has to get the anxiety out.
I was in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL and because I was in this “gifted kids” class a few times a week, we were expected to be mature enough to not only follow the case, but watch the verdict in class. That is a really, REALLY harsh way to introduce a little girl to the idea that Men Can Get Away With It. (Sadly, I’d actually learned the “sometimes cops are racist/incompetent” lesson earlier.)
I was in elementary school too but young enough that I didn’t really know/care what was going on. All I remember is the lunch lady interrupting lunch to yell the verdict as soon as it was announced. To a whole cafeteria full of children. While doing a joyful jig. I don’t have any kind words for her.
I was also in elementary school. I remember that I was over at a friend’s house for a sleepover, and her parents were watching the TV when the verdict was announced. We kids didn’t really understand what was going on; we just knew that a man had killed his wife, and now he was being set free. Being dumb kids, we started running around yelling that O.J. Simpson was coming to get us.
Ad away! The Toast is important to my daily joy, and ads won’t make a dent in that one bit.
In some very exciting news, DeRay Mckesson is running for mayor of Baltimore. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Agreed to this! I keep checking to see if I have an ad blocker on (which I don’t), because I barely see any ads! Can definitely be upped
So that explains why he’s been making the rounds on all the late-night shows!
That Melanie Mark video brought tears to my eyes!!
I have zero problem with your ads. However, you might want to know sometimes the banner (horizontal) ads (such as the one at the bottom of this page right under where I’m typing) appear to be bigger than the space allotted for for – so words get cut off.
Same with tears! There’s just so much joy in every single part of that moment.
I also teared up and had to hide behind my monitors for a bit until I had it under control.
Totally welling up here at my desk. Wonderful!
Ditto, sitting at my desk crying! Such joy!
It was beautiful. It reminded me of an article I read in Macleans years ago. One of the B.C. universities had aboriginal students graduating who had hundreds of people wanting to come to the graduation ceremony. They were not just the first university graduates in their families, but in their whole communities, so the entire communities wanted to see it. So the university created a separate (optional!) graduation ceremony just for aboriginal students.
No, Mark Driscoll. NO!
Bro Calvinists. Ughhhhhhhhhhh.
On Ads; I work in advertising and I’d feel like a bit of a traitor if I used ad blocker; generally speaking I don’t mind ads, I’ve been on the internet long enough that I’m pretty much immune to any kind of banner advertising. I’m not a huge fan of ads that break up the content (pre-roll on videos or in text banners), especially on mobile, but I’ll tolerate it if the ads are high quality and non-intrusive (video banner ads are hell.). My huge bug-bear is ads that take over your whole screen and only have a tiny x to get out of them, or ads that surround the entire page and the tiniest click will send you off to a shitty website (Hellooo Cracked.), not just because they’re annoy, but also because their usually shitty ads too and often crash something.
Generally I have found The Toast to be a lovely experience, the ads are barely noticeable and I don’t mind them because I know they make money for you guys!
I always assume the last type of ads you mentioned are trying to give me a virus. I don’t use adblock at work, and that kind of nonsense is the number one way to make me not go to your site. I’m not about to get yelled at by IT because you have shitty ad content.
I think most people who are in their 20s and up now, grew up in an age where all internet advertising would give you a virus so we instinctively ignore it (Google has done heatmapping, which tracks where people look on a website, that shows we automatically ignore the first two results on google because we distrust any sort of sponsored results, that’s why they’re constantly moving ads around, to try and get us to pay attention)
TBH I don’t think anyone (apart from the likes of Torrenting sites) is trying to give you a virus anymore, but those shitty ads will probably crash your browser, and it will definitely get me to x out if I’m on my phone, especially if it only loads in when I’m halfway through reading the article. I even have trouble with the likes of Forbes and such that have the 5 second pre-screen.
The idea that advertising doesn’t have to be disruptive or interruptive is gradually gaining traction, but the world will be so much better when advertisers just understand this, people will happily look at your ads, content and products, IF you don’t annoy them and they’re well targeted.
ONTOH its only really older generations that get angry about ads online, because they remember when the internet was free of them, younger people, the ‘Digital Natives’ (UUGGGGHHH), who are teenagers now understand that the business transaction going on, that they are paying for their entertainment with their attention to advertisements.
Oh, it’s definitely mistrust left over from clicking the wrong play button on Megavideo and suddenly opening 7 new tabs most of which were Not Good for your computer. I objectively know it’s benign, but I kind of can’t shake it! It’s really interesting how online advertising expectations differ between people of different ages, like of course the Youths are most accepting because they grew up with it.
Megavideo! Now THAT takes me back…
My life ended the day megavideo went down. Putlocker was just never the same.
Thank gawd I discovered torrenting, although it’s probably the reason my laptop doesn’t work anymore…
Heh, I had to reinstall windows on my laptop when I was about 19 and exploring the shadier parts of the internet for the first time. I ended up with spontaneous autoplaying popups. I wiped the hard drive with a quickness when I realized I had to give a powerpoint presentation in the near future.
I resent “Digital Natives” who expect to see photos and images on everything. They’re ruining my internetting experience that is happy with calm and quiet text. And that’s one of the reasons I dislike ads. Give me a little text link and I will happily look closer. if there’s a lot of pictures, I’m more likely to ignore it because it’s Too Much Visual Information. (I’m swiftly losing patience with Twitter because they keep making images BIGGER and more intrusive. I loathe my work’s new website because it’s all images everywhere with every link and they aren’t always obvious what the image is supposed to refer to.)
AUTO PLAY VIDEO ON FACEBOOK.
I am scrolling through Facebook on the bus, I do not want to watch a fucking video. Apparently video content is super ‘in’ now. Fuck off.
Stupid young people ruining the internet.
Tumblr is HORRIBLE for autoplay video and I installed an old, outdated adblocker just so i could have the targeted URL blocking function (some of the more recent ones don’t have an easy way to do that, alas), and now not a single Vine will load in my firefox, and Tumblr videos are blocked at the source, though they still try to load, sadly.
I hate video and audio content as a general rule, so autoplaying stuff is worse. It’s really annoying that vlogs and podcasts are so easy to produce now, because no one creates transcripts and few people write up summaries of each one. They’re so very not accessible (I find them draining and difficult to follow without subtitles, even when I do have the energy to try to listen/watch).
Oh thank goodness I’m not alone. And thank you for making me feel better.
You say you even have trouble with Forbes as though they don’t have one of the worst UX experiences of any website I’ve ever been on and good god do I still find myself on there and in a yelling mood on the regular cause they actually publish stuff that’s useful to me for business research purposes frequently. It’s a terribly designed site though and one of the things I complain about most regularly inside my head (and also sometimes on Twitter).
V true! I meant forbes as an example of the high end publishers who fucking love them pre screen ads. Why!!! Just because your content is good doesn’t mean you get away with shitty ux.
That ny mag article about has the same problem, ads loading in text causingg the content to jump around and I loose my place every time I scroll!!!
The ones that drive me up a wall are the ones that take a while to load, so you’ve already started reading and then Whoops! there goes the paragraph you were checking out because here’s an ad or a video or something. it makes everything go wonky, especially on cell phones.
Toast ads are fine though. They’re often not for things I’m interested in, but hey.
I’ve started to see ones that make you lose your space on the article on purpose! Like, you’re reading, and then it kind of rolls out when it senses you’ve gotten to that section, displacing text so you have to scroll down further, then once the video is over it disappears and the displaced text jumps back up so you have to find your place halfway up the page. It drives me crazy.
I’m so used to the much more obnoxious ads (those of the type you describe that block text) that I have never once even considered being bothered by Toast ads. Ad away, add even more ads if it will help. As long as they don’t have autoplay or block the articles, I can’t imagine being bothered by any of them in the slightest.
hell I’ve made banner ads and spent hours bughunting why they mysteriously weren’t working until I remembered to turn my adblocker off.
Toasties, I got a cat. Just you wait until Friday.
I am so glad there are other cat-loving people on the Toast. I have never been on a site with so many dog-lovers.
(Not that they are necessarily mutually exclusive, obv, but … I lean towards cat. *comes out*)
Can’t wait!
Probably no one would be opposed to a sneak preview?
Why are we waiting tho? Moar cat pictures!
Apparently my I-love-John-Boyega comment got posted fine, but the picture was wonky. THIS is why I love John Boyega.
Did you see what he just tweeted?
oh, HELLO.
VIII
HNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG
INDEED
Hot DAMN!
holy shit
Oh my god, he is an absolute delight.
HISTORICAL FICTION IS THE BEST and I’m so glad to see the bits in that piece about Hilary Mantel getting ~revenge~ on publishers with the Cromwell trilogy.
Also, I have been informed via yesterday’s comments that people are not aware that there was a musical made of “Heathers”. Please experience the greatness of it via this playlist. IT IS SO GOOD Y’ALL
That was me!! Also if you look there is a video of the whole performance on youtube also.
Ooo, new stuff to listen to! Many thanks.
Nicole (no, other Nicole) wrote this great piece that combines some of my favorite things: The Toast, The Billfold, deleted comments, and all of Rory’s boyfriends are garbage.
https://thebillfold.com/how-gilmore-girls-do-mone…
Maybe I’m just a Jess apologist because I thought he was dreamy when I was 14, but this seems out of character! I don’t think he’d be quite as large of a mansplain-y ~literary~ douchebag.
I always saw Jess as a #masculinitysofragile kind of guy so it didn’t seem out of character to me.
I just asked google if Jess would be back in the reboot (still unsure) and it autofilled to “is jesus coming back in 2016.” Also unsure.
I distinctly remember him discussing Jane Austen with Paris, and also calling Ayn Rand a crackpot (Rory, The Fountainhead, really? REALLY), so Jess: not the biggest douchebag in the canoe. Although he loved Hemingway, so who knows. I also am biased because Jess is my fave.
I think Nicole (Billfold Nicole–too many great Nicoles to discuss) was pretty forgiving in her piece–Jess, true to form, started out with a terrible comment and has learned that he needs edit/think carefully about his words in order to publish. Still a little douchey, but not visible to most of the (fictional) viewing public, unlike when he was younger. So…not entirely out of character, I think. Also I love that he reads and donates to The Toast.
Jess was definitely the dreamiest. Personality-wise, he was Not Great, but he was certainly the least irritating of Rory’s boyfriends. (SHUT UP, LOGAN).
In my headcanon Rory ends up with Seth Cohen from The O.C. (Yes I know this is a Television Violation because Adam Brody played a different character on Gilmore Girls, but one can just pretend they are doppelgangers.)
That one is good but it led me back to the Richard one which is absolutely devastating: https://thebillfold.com/how-gilmore-girls-do-mone…
ME TOO. Any hopes of productivity today are gone.
thank you for this. woke up with a deep near-crippling depression, trying to wade out the *real* feelings from the *maybe it’s hormones* from the *overwhelmed at work* from the *nope, that’s my mind playing tricks* feelings. and this just filled my belly with joy & the confidence to make it through today. couldn’t have done it without you, smrtcookie.
Many warm thoughts to you, toast friend. I hope today was a good day and tomorrow is even better.
Rory Gilmore was THE WORST.
Actually, 2nd worst. Behind Lorelai (the 2nd).
I LOVE THIS, thank you for sharing it!
Jess is a total monster and I believe he would only read The Toast to CONGRATULATE himself for doing so/post comments that are juuuuust not-smug enough to clear moderation.
Just want to make sure that everyone knows that if you can wipe up your tears after the Richard one and keep clicking “Previously” you will soon be rewarded with an awesome story about Lane.
Lahv articles having to do with Bill Marler and his work. UGH I AM HERE FOR FOOD SAFETY LEGAL ISSUES FOR SOME REASON
Thank you for letting us know, Nicole. I’m too paranoid about the internet to turn off NoScript entirely, but I will step up the tipping.
BTW: I really like the “tip jar” at the end of every article. And not just because in my head I say “I’d buy THAT for a dollar” every time I click on it!
I threw a full 60 in at the end of last year as I am a Maximum Fun subscriber and the Toast is at least as crucial to my sanity as MBMBAM, etc. – but I’m glad to hear I can set up a monthly subscription here, too!
I don’t get the hate for historical fiction. It’s my favorite, honestly. And I’m writing one. So, not objective in this fight.
BUT, I find it very condescending that people look down on it, and they seem to look down on it especially when women are the writers or the readers. I mean, for fucks sake, A Tale of Two Cities is Historical Fiction, if you want to be technical about it. The Scarlet Letter is Historical Fiction. It’s the same condescension people have about YA fiction, when some of the greatest classics have revolved around teens (Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Lord of the Flies…etc.). There are quality differences, of course. Good and bad in each genre. But to dismiss the genre in one patronizing fell swoop is so obnoxious, and those sort of generalizations seem to be regularly leveled at the things women read and respond to.
It’s so definitely related to a misogyny in literature, and I think because it comes with a reek of “ew, romance” because historical fiction is so closely associated with romance fiction (although even that is already an outdated assumption) that people just assume that all historical is “lesser.” How gross. As if there is something wrong with romance fiction OR there is something wrong with enjoying a damn historical novel. God dammit this pisses me off so much.
I don’t get it either! Historical fiction has been my preferred genre for like over a year now, it’s (almost) all I watch, minus a few dips into historical non-fic when I’m in the mood.
/cheering at your feet/
It seems so obvious to me that the disdain or dismissal of YA and historical fiction is about women. Unlike “chicklit,” they just aren’t saying outright that the authors are women because they aren’t all women. But many authors and readers are. (Meanwhile, I read a shitton of YA as a 20-something because there are so many women authors that I love… this is a hot button issue for me.)
I’m tired of people setting themselves up as arbiters of what is worth reading. People can and should read whatever they want to! Maybe I’m tired of reading novels about the ennui and alienation of modern life. That is not grounds for revoking my degrees.
As an aside, I realized it would be hypocritical to complain about my daughter’s love of princess stories/swag when I love historical novels about royalty and would happily swan about in a velvet cloak if I thought that an overweight Midwestern housewife could get away with it.
Life is too short NOT to swan about in a velvet cloak. #highlyrecommended
I love you.
Having formerly been involved in RenFaire and SCA, I have known many people who spent a great deal of time swanning about in velvet cloaks, a significant percentage of whom were overweight housewives. Zero fucks were given. As Alluvial_Fan pointed out, life is short. Do it.
I once made a hooded wool cape lined with poly fleece for an SCA event that was predicted to be freezing cold. It turned out to be, indeed, a really warm cape, and it was down to my knees so it kept almost all of me warm, and it fit over everything I wore, so I used it as my winter coat for most of a winter. A+ would recommend.
I literally have no time for anyone who sneers at historical fiction. No faster way for your taste and opinion to become irrelevant to me. Also, modern contemporary serious ~literature~ (Jonathan Franzen, even Gone Girl) isn’t worth my time. Reading is for ESCAPISM, not for serious meditation on how hopelessly miserable we are as a species and why.
I know, right? I’m so BORED with books about the misery of ordinary life, or *very serious family issues* or whatever the hell ‘literary fiction’ is about these days.
I call those books “People Coming to Terms With Things.” And I similarly cannot muster up an ounce of caring. Like, I’ve already read and greatly enjoyed The Awakening and I don’t personally think you’re going to to much better than Kate Chopin did in a scant 100 or so pages, random dude with pretensions to ~literary fiction.
I want my workaday fiction to be more exciting and less full of random existential dread than my workaday life.
Oh thank you, that’s a great term for it and I’m going to use that from now on.
Thank you! War and fucking PEACE is historical fiction so they need to shut it.
Well, so much of it isn’t exactly historical: it’s modern people in modern situations (or, even worse, in ridiculous modern romance novel situations) dressed up in historical costumes. And the research is often badly done, or not done at all: as if the author didn’t do the reading before one lecture in college one day, and fell asleep through half of it anyway, but based a novel on the notes they took for the other half. Finding historical fiction that doesn’t mess up the history is difficult. Finding historical fiction that doesn’t mess up the history, and is well-enough written to play around with the differences in ideas and psychology between then and now, is rare indeed. Hillary Mantel is awesomely good at it all, but she’s an outlier.
Dorothy Dunnet and PF Chisholm (who also writes as Patricia Finney) are my go-tos.
I agree with your comment, but not the assumption behind it–that people only read historical fiction to get an authentic historical experience and a truly literary work. I …prefer those types of historical fictions personally, BUT, I don’t like the idea that if it’s not authentic then it’s not worth reading. Sometimes we all need escapism, and that’s not new. 200 years ago, people read Ivanhoe and imagined they really belonged in the 12th century. Now they read Philippa Gregory and imagine themselves as a Tudor.
Hilary Mantel is definitely an anomaly. She actually transports you to a totally different period, immerses you in a new mindset. In some ways, it’s amazing. In other ways, it’s a little harder to relate to. You have to adjust your own mind to get the most of her books; it’s more work. Some days, that’s great, and other days you just need something else from a book.
Toasties, anyone else following the pcr hearings in the hae min lee/adnan syed case? I’m obsessing just a little bit.
Following in the “serial is going to push me updates from Sarah Koenig about it” sense.
the serial discussion group on FB has an ongoing thread for each day of the PCR hearings that I’m going to follow.
Well birth control isn’t absolutely 100% secure so I think to be safe we should really not allow any woman to legally consume alcohol without first providing a written note from her doctor confirming menopause. Better safe than sorry.
Yeah, I mean really, should we ever be eating fish or taking planes or eating lunch meat or scooping litter boxes or accidentally spilling raw chicken juice out of the package and all over the floor (maybe that was just me)? Honestly, let’s just all sit at home in the living room with no stimulation and a nutritious food paste tube. That will be administered by a third party, because overeating is also bad for your potential babies!
Official policy reccomendation from ‘small govmint’ advocates who abhor the ‘nanny state’
Grrrrrrr.
Its only a nanny state when the restrictions apply to white men.
Everything else is for peoples own good because they’re too stupid to know better.
Face palm! That explains my confusion. 😉
Small enough to fit in your uterus!
RAGE on seeing that CDC recommendation. RAGE. The CDC can put their bootstraps up their bums.
No but really, how long do you think it will take before someone actually tries to criminalize alcohol for all women 21-50, “just in case”?
And then how long you think it will take before they’re successful?
Someone in Tennessee or Indiana is probably already drafting the legislation.
The Tennessee politicians are still a little too busy getting outraged at Planned Parenthood right now, but I’m sure if someone puts a bug in the ear of my district’s House representative, he could take time away from his busy schedule of sending emails about how he used to be an ob-gyn so he supports babies and guns in order to write something up.
Depends on if the GOP gets back into the White House! I learned in yesterday’s LR that the last round of this asshattery (CDC recommendations to basically treat all menstruating women as “pre-pregnancy”) came from the Bush years.
I can’t wait for an excuse to brandish my tubal ligation receipts in public, bring it on.
This infographic is really offensive to me:
Sure, our baby was a surprise, but Gin has been a wonderful father and we’re very happy.
Also: I’d say STDs are a risk of unprotected sex, but it’s a little insulting to say it’s a risk of drinking, right?
Pretty insulting. (And some pass through skin contact, not even FLUIDS, so like, what, we’re going to say that alcohol is responsible there how exactly?)
I was thinking the same thing about unintended pregnancy. You don’t just drink a lot and then poof, fetus!
Maybe I’m being uncharitable but it reads to me like the STDs/unintended pregnancy “risks” are bizarre euphemisms for sexual assault.
That is exactly how it’s coming across for me too.
i read it more as slut shaming ’cause, you know, you get a couple of drinks in a lady and she’ll just put out to whomever is handy, having unprotected sex with no thoughts to the consequences.
Oooh it could be BOTH! Two misogynist tropes for the price of one! What a fuckin mess.
Also “injury/violence.”
I’ve seen some things that include “domestic violence” on the “For Any Woman” list and I had to rage out.
I feel like this is a misguided move by the CDC. They are trying to make science-based recommendations, but not really considering the real life application of these recommendations. I don’t think there is much wrong with pointing out the risks, but until birth control and reproductive care are much more accessible than they are today it is very troubling to see an organization say that you need to have contraception before drinking. That said, I work in reproductive health issues and while I love birth defects prevention and take a massive dose of folic acid every day and believe that the work is important, I think that their recommendations are often idealistic and do not acknowledge the challenges people face in their lives. Which is very frustrating but true of so many health organizations.
Also — my partner and I have been together for nearly 20 years, and for many of those years, we used only condoms to prevent pregnancy. Knowing I don’t want to have kids, I also knew that if I became pregnant through a condom failure, I would obtain an abortion. How then, should I not be allowed to drink, under the CDC’s rules? Should I get like, a sworn statement or something to carry around to bars? A note from my penis-having spouse? What about my friend who doesn’t want kids and is married to a woman? This whole thing is just so short-sighted and offensive I don’t even know what to do.
Yeah, it’s almost as though they can’t acknowledge a legal and safe way to terminate unwanted pregnancies…
To be fair, CDC gets funding through the federal budget and what with the gag policies and the Hyde Amendment and threats about funding cuts and defunding of family planning clinics, I am not surprised they don’t mention abortion. CDC does have a very tiny abortion surveillance program that mostly just counts the number of abortions happening in the US. The budget for family planning and reproductive health is probably, in some way, contingent on CDC not talking about abortion. Just like funding for some violence prevention research is, in some way, contingent on CDC not investigating gun violence. It’s shitty and terrible and while I want to give CDC the benefit of the doubt because I’m into public health this set of recommendations seems misguided.
I get that, but there’s still a gross, sexist, ignorant line of reasoning that gets from “alcohol’s effects on fetuses” to “can’t talk about abortion” and then lands on “I know, let’s just treat all women as potential incubators.”
I’m going to be a legal pedant here and say that one of the first things that Obama did in office was repeal the Global Gag rule which applied to funding international development products that were related to abortion. I don’t think there are any federal domestic gag rules but am happy to be corrected if wrong!
Sadlt, the Hyde amendment is still the law of the land
Yep, let’s be honest, if this was truly a dispassionate, “science only” exercise, the recommendation that is most effective to minimize the risk of FASD and also minimizes social disruption is to recommend that pregnant women don’t drink and those who get pregnant unintentionally abort if they’ve been drinking during the pregnancy period. After all, birth control pills are pretty failure-prone but abortion is not. That would never fhappen, though, because they’re letting public sentiment guide their recommendations.
Most frustrating to me: no discussion of the other other half of the equation…heterosexual men and their lack of birth control options. It takes TWO.
Male pill! Or IUD-like implant! Reversible, long-term, out-patient birth control methods for men! Yes I get the “involved vs. committed” thing, but men have a right to not father children if they don’t want them. And, just like when it’s for women, the “well, don’t have sex then!” advice is crap.
Google RISUG and/or Vasalgel. Reversible implant injected into the vas deferens to block sperm. Supposed to be as effective as a vasectomy, but easier, more reversible, and with fewer side effects/less pain. Still a couple years out, but clinical trials are starting.
That’s where they pretty much block a couple tubes with superglue, right? I know we’re hoping for something a touch less invasive but anything is better than nothing.
Which I imagine isn’t significantly more invasive than having an IUD inserted. Probably much less painful.
Also seeing as it’s slashed into injuries “violence” clearly means “violence against you while you’re drunk”
Yeah… I mean, it’s true that if you get some drinks into me I am way more likely to start slapping people but I don’t think that was what they were referring to.
Me too!
My best friends are a series of viciously beautiful broads, one of whom got kicked out of a bar for PUNCHING A MAN IN THE FACE after he got rude and handsy (and had been asked to back off).
Really, I think that MEN should have to stop drinking to avoid being huge assholes.
can I come hang out with you?
I did the same thing in college! I was friends with the bartender, so the asshole got bounced. It was a good day.
Whiskey slaps!!
I’m gay and in a relationship. Does this mean drinking will lead to spontaneous impregnantion? Is this the answer to the sperm bank / who-should-the-donor-be questions we’ve been asking?
Excellent news, actually.
Turns out alcohol IS the solution!
The New York Times article about the CDC recommendations felt the need to include a sentence about how the recommendations SEEMED TO BE referring to heterosexual sex.
I LOLed for about 5 minutes.
Only if you have cocktails/mixed drinks–clearly all that diffusion leads directly to abiogenesis.
At least it’s a theory to test? If you had twins you could name them Vermouth and Vodka, or at least Sherry and Brandy. (or um, not.)
When doing stuff about human reproduction in GCSE Biology, our textbook listed “multiple births” as a potential negative side-effect of fertility drugs/treatment. I am a triplet born as a result of fertility drug use. I’m not offended, exactly (because god knows I would be horrified to have triplets), but it is weird to see that being listed as a correct answer.
and cancer?!?!?
Moderate daily alcohol actually reduces your risk of a range of heart attack, stroke, and cancers, and this effect has held *especially* true for women in studies.
Doctors even prescribe it now. My brother has a teetotaling mother-in-law who was specifically told she needed to have a daily glass of alcohol for her health to combat heart problems. (She doesn’t because she tried and didn’t like the taste of wine, but I plan to help him introduce her to Chambord!).
This stupid ad is also bad science.
Apparently my great-grandfather was a teetotaler until he got older and started having heart problems. The doctor told him to drink an alcoholic beverage every day, so he started taking a shot of whiskey with breakfast. Damn.
I’m glad to hear that this is not just an old-timey cure that farm people did, but actual advice that doctors give today.
A SHOT OF WHISKEY WITH BREAKFAST.
#lifegoals
If I ever turn 80 I’ll totally start doing that.
To be fair–though I don’t want to be fair to it–the “moderate daily alcohol” benefit is often exaggerated by doctors and the media both. This does not make the CDC’s ad any less terrible, though.
yeah, if I could still edit my original comment, I would make it just “some cancers,” because alcohol consumption can decrease the likelihood of some but increase the likelihood of others, of course.
That said, it’s hard to know whether the benefits of moderate daily alcohol are exaggerated or not because of all the confounding factors. Moderate alcohol certainly does a great job of moderating stress, which is really bad for you and which we also have trouble measuring. People in the Anglo-Saxon world are also pretty bad about sticking to the “moderate” part, for whatever reason. And bodies are individual, etc. But moderate alcohol definitely has been great for my health, esp. heart and nervous system. I have one of those vacuum-seal corks that make a bottle of wine last for roughly a week while still tasting good, and it’s great — heartily recommended to all!
Too lazy to look it up now, but I remember a study came out a few years ago saying that moderate-to-heavy social drinkers lived longer than light drinkers and teetotalers, but they didn’t rule out income levels, so they were pretty sure it was because moderate-to-heavy drinkers had better income (booze isn’t free!) and because they were usually social drinkers, and good social connections are also known to lead to longer lifespans.
Actually, alcohol does have specific physiological benefits if taken in moderation. (Like everything, it’s tonic and poison — dosage matters, of course). The reason it is good for cardiovascular health is that it affects your level of lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and it also affects blood clotting, making it less likely for you to get blood clots that would travel to the heart, lungs, or brain and cause a heart attack or embolism or stroke. I’m genetically predisposed to clotting, so that’s one of the reasons I am a wine-with-dinner person.
Other benefits apparently are protecting against type-2 diabetes, gallstones, and stress. Of course, if you drink too much, then you get the major negative effects, up to and including brain damage and death, but we all know about those already.
Most things in life are like that — pharmakon — remedy in the right dosage and circumstances, poison in the wrong.
Thank you for mentioning that it is bad science. All of the reactions I’ve seen are angry about it being condescending and unrealistic. Which it is! But I am angry because I think it is WRONG.
You know what we have consistently found to be dangerous to a developing fetus? Binge drinking. There is no good evidence that light drinking negatively impacts behavioral or cognitive outcomes at all, and lots of data that shows it having no impact or slightly positive impact! Good, diverse data! And scientists also understand the biological mechanisms by which light vs. binge drinking impact pregnancy differently.
Which is certainly not the same as “proof” that it’s safe, and I totally respect women who choose to go totally no alcohol when they are trying or pregnant. HOWEVER, I can’t believe that in spite of all logical science to the contrary, we still say things like “any drinking is bad” to pregnant women.
yeah, this is exactly the problem I have with it – it’s not only bad science, it directly contradicts what a lot of women are hearing from their doctor or friends who have been pregnant or books about pregnancy. Between that and the condescending “you’re all potentially pregnant” BS it’s setting itself up for backlash. I understand public health agencies needing to err on the side of caution but at some point that hits a wall of “ok, that’s just wrong, I’m ignoring it.”
I have to point out the ad does say “Drinking too much” instead of “Drinking at all.” But it really ought to define what it means by “too much,” since it lists so many scary possibilities.
Isn’t the problem that they don’t actually, with proof, know how much is too much, though?
I mean, what pregnant lady is signing up to participate in that study?
(I want to be very, very clear that I think this CDC infographic is gross garbage scare mongering. Not attempting to defend them here.)
It does define “drinking too much” as “any alcohol” if you are pregnant though, in the row of boxes underneath that line!
Oh, thanks for pointing that out!
People who get unusually red while drinking are at increased risk of esophageal cancer since their bodies cannot break down acetylaldehyde as efficiently.
Okay, but alcohol DOES increase your risk of breast cancer. Like, they’re as sure of that as they are that cigarettes increase your risk of lung cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_breast_…
It’s a fairly low increase of risk, but it exists.
I hate the general tone of women-and-alcohol literature: “Little lady, you don’t want to get mixed up in this dangerous game! Don’t get peer pressured into doing something that’s out of your depth!” Like they think “all women” and “teens in health class” are one in the same, in a way that you never see directed at men. Excuse me CDC but alcohol and I were good friends long before you and I ever became acquainted.
I’m gonna make a little peep in defense of the CDC with regard to this infographic ONLY…I work as a clinician for patients with drug addiction, and one of the symptoms of long-term addiction is lack of consequential thinking. Many of our clients are literally not able to make simple connections like, “if I punch this guy, I might get arrested and then the police will find the cocaine in my pocket, and I might end up in jail.” Likewise many clients are not able to say, “If I drink too much, I might have unprotected/unsafe sex, putting myself at risk for STDs, sexual violence, (and possibly unwanted pregnancy).” Educators in drug treatment programs do exercises with the clients to train them in this type of thinking. I see this infographic as trying to get people to think about previously unforeseen consequences. Not everyone is as clear-headed, educated, and empowered as the Toast readership.
The other announcement, now that’s a different story and I 100% agree that it is condescending to assume that women in general cannot manage their reproduction any better than that.
Oops, I accidentally deleted part of my comment; drinking too much is equally a risk to men, for almost identical reasons, and the CDC should not target women alone.
this this thiiiiiiiiiiiis
Thanks for this insight! It is a complex issue and there are so many facets. It is easy to have the knee-jerk “these guidelines are condescending!” response, but I also think that the recs are addressing a lot of things. It just seems like the presentation or press-work was poorly handled.
“injuries/violence” ???
how about hell no, that is not a woman’s fault because of drinking?? That is the fault of the person who decided to be violent at her????
just incoherent with rage at this infographic.
Yeah. I posted something similar because I was too ragey to read through all the other comments first, but THIS.
The / is so disturbing, like, yes, of course, people who are drunk are far more likely to injure themselves in accidents, but what does that have to do with drunk people being attacked?
Is the “violence” listed here supposed to be something that the drinking woman does or something she is subjected to, in which case HOLY VICTIM BLAMING, BATMAN
It’s horrible for all the reasons mentioned by other Toasties, but it’s also horrible because — like almost all the other stuff out there regarding pregnancy — it ignores the fact that trans men and AFAB non-binary people can conceive.
CDC, you Carl.
I’m usually behind whatever the CDC recommends, but wow those drinking recommendations made me so mad!
From the CDC infographic, did you know that violence is one of the risks to a woman who drinks too much? If only she wouldn’t drink so much! WE COULD SOLVE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN HERE, PEOPLE.
Oh my god, it’s only 8:30am, and it’s enough to make me want a drink.
Make sure to pee on the little stick before you open that bottle, now….
Hah!
I should also test for STDs afterwards, because that’s also a risk of alcohol!
I’m nursing AND using contraception and I still want to drink because of those recommendations.
I find myself coming down weirdly team CDC here, because the agency isn’t particularly fond of alcohol for men, either. They even warn that drinking can make men violent assholes*. If those warnings don’t get the same media play, that probably has a lot more to do with cultural sexism than the CDC itself.
*not their exact wording.
I understand your point, but I think the CDC, being the large, well-organized and well-respected institution that it is, bears the onus of understanding how their recommendations will be received by the public and acting accordingly. And warning women that if they drink, someone might beat on them or rape them is not only insulting, it’s ineffective.
And this isn’t a report on the correlation between alcohol consumption and violence like the men’s health report. It’s a slick infographic meant to be widely distributed to warn women about the dangers of drinking. It’s deep in victim-blaming territory, and the CDC ought to know that.
And that’s not even touching the pile of insult and denial of agency that is treating all adult women as either pregnant or pre-pregnant.
Yeah, I do agree that the infographic is clumsy. Also discussing this below in my long, self-immolating post defending the CDC, but do you think it would have been less offensive to delineate the steps leading from alcohol to the various risks? It seems pretty clear to me what they meant in each case, but it might have been better to expend a little more text on it.
I think there’s room to discuss issues along the lines of “it’s always best to keep your wits about you, and too much alcohol dulls your wits”, in the same vein as “if you’re too drunk to drive, you’re probably too drunk to have sex”. And certainly, alcohol is a psychoactive drug and a toxin that is well-correlated with things like violence, and we shouldn’t ignore that.
But that kind of discussion is too nuanced to lend itself well to bullet points on an infographic. And unfortunately, it feels like instead of honoring the nuance, what they went for here was oversimplification that reads like scare tactics and victim-blaming, which is something women get plenty of already.
The same argument could be used to say DUI’s are a risk associated with alcohol, but they don’t list that in their warning to women. I would argue that’s because the focus has been put on “don’t drive while drunk” rather than “don’t get drunk, ever”, because there is a general understanding that the decision to drive is an active one made by the drunk person. But they’re not saying “don’t have sex while drunk”; they’re saying “don’t get drunk, ever” because bad things might be done to you by predators. And, well, bad shit happens to sober people too. DUI’s don’t happen to sober people. So here the burden of responsibility is placed on the drunk woman because of what might happen to her, rather than acknowledging that those risks also involve active decisions on the part of the woman and/or someone else. And on top of that, it’s focused on situations that have a long history of blaming the woman no matter what she does.
ETA: I hope that last part makes sense!
It makes total sense! In fact, I tried to make the same point below but without the DUI analogy it came out a lot more muddled
This does make sense! I think including the “violence” risk without some sort of nod to the issues you bring up was a bad idea. The others don’t bother me so much, seeing as they’re more straightforward health effects or outcomes linked to things women have agency over, i.e. choosing to use protection to avoid STDs or not getting behind the wheel to avoid injuries in a drunk-driving crash.
(And yeah, I do know that some women are in situations where they cannot chose to use BC because of abusive partners, etc. I don’t want to negate that. But I am also leery of going directly to assuming that women won’t have agency in their decisions. It feels even more patronizing to me, if that makes sense.)
I also think it’s nice that they mention “any woman,” so it’s not like this is just limited to a certain group of woman, rich women can have alcohol problems too, etc.
Speaking of $$$, Nicole can you tell me if there is a significant difference between tipping the Toast a dollar multiple times vs. donating money all at once? I’m curious whether processing fees and such making it more beneficial to Tip all at once, rather than multiple smaller amounts.
I too am wondering this! I am just starting to have enough money to make a regular donation and could go about it any way that best suits the Toast.
I’m not Nicole, but I expect that receiving regular donations would help them better plan future expenses, have a better sense of their revenue, etc.
So what I’m getting out of that Nathaniel Hawthorne quote is that he was pissed off that these ~romantic~ historical novels by were selling better than ~serious~ historical novels like The Scarlet Letter, basically.
I think that’s fair, but I think Hawthorne also had a legitimate bone to pick with sentimentalist renderings of early America.
BECAUSE THE SCARLET LETTER IS GARBAGE.
grumble grumble grumble
Ugh, SO BORING. A friend told me he was doing his MA on Hawthorne and I was like WHY? Do you have trouble sleeping?
But what if I told you there’s a possibility that Hawthorne had a SECRET GAY ENCOUNTER with Herman Melville?
(The only interesting things about Hawthorne, really, are these: (1) He was shitty at being on a commune; (2) he and Melville may have touched each other in their respective bathing-suit-areas; and (3) anything he writes about his daughter, Una.)
Then Nathaniel Hawthorne, the person, gets slightly more interesting, but the books written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, slightly more interesting person, stay super boring.
Okay. This is correct.
For the record, I thought Moby Dick was super boring, too. And I really resented that I learned nothing about whale hunting. But it was nice to have confirmation that white is the awfullest colour 😉
From what I hear, they spent a few weeks together in a secluded cabin where it could have happened, but then Hawthorne booked it and their relationship was never the same and Melville was very sad about the whole thing.
The bio I read said it was an overnight thing. Hawthorne came to visit Melville and Elizabeth one evening and got snowed in. The two men retired to Melville’s study, where they stayed all night. Elizabeth and I ::think:: her mother, unless it was Melville’s mother, tried listening at the door but couldn’t get a sense of what was happening.
The theories are:
(1) Melville made a pass at Hawthorne, who reciprocated, but then freaked out
(2) Melville made a pass at Hawthorne, who did ::not:: reciprocate, and still freaked out
But the “booked it” part you mention is pretty much what I read, too. The biographer (and I can’t remember the biographer’s name; when I get home I can share it) suggests that there’s a marked difference in Melville’s writing pre- and post- the Big Break. There’s an enthusiastic hopefulness in Moby-Dick. There’s a jaded bitterness in The Confidence Man.
It all feels true to me. I can easily see Hawthorne not minding at ALL that even a guy had fallen in love with him because Hawthorne was like that and liked being admired. Melville, who was younger, treated Hawthorne like a god, and those streams — eros and dios — are easy to cross. Plus man ALIVE, have you read the way Melville writes about Hawthorne? S’truth.
History may never know what Hawthorne’s intentions were towards Melville, but Melville was one thousand percent that guy who turns into a happy puppy whenever he has a crush. Sources straight-up say he regarded Hawthorne with adoration.
OMG the letters:
“Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips — lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. . . .”
“P.S. I can’t stop yet. If the world was entirely made up of Magians, I’ll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand — a million — billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question — they are One.”
Also this book review!
““already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further and further, shoots his strong New England roots in the hot soil of my Southern soul”
::fans self:: My word, Herman.
RIGHT?!
“shoots his strong New England roots in the hot soil of my Southern soul”
oh.
oh my.
thank you so much for this thread
Herman, oh my god, you have no chill. Take your hot Southern soul and go sit down for a bit.
I’m currently working on a report that contains an even WORSE alcohol-related recommendation from the “women theoretically could have a baby, this is the most important thing” school of thought. And I’m not in a position where I can say, “Seriously? No, SERIOUSLY?” (Exact recommendation omitted so this isn’t identifiable. But ugh.)
I feel like the only good thing to come out of the “women theoretically could have a baby, this is the most important thing” concept has been the promotion of LARC contracpetives. I thought there would be more, but I can’t think of any because most public assistance doesn’t kick in until you are pregnant which is a bit late for high doses of Folic Acid and getting regular medical care because the detrimental effects of not having those things have already had an impact on the fetus by the time you realize you are pregnant.
I LOVE YOU CARMELLA AND YOUR DELICIOUSLY SNOWY SPOTTED PUPPYDOM.
[that is all, carry on]
The teeny paw-up!
You said what I wanted to. I have missed
Yes, for Carmella. Those ears, those spots. That girl. So good to see her again.
Carmella, you cutie! Say hi to the Big Dogs for us!
I had all these hilariously funny jokes I wanted to make on Twitter about “heh-heh, can’t wait to have a baby after drinking this cocktail as per the CDC” but that made me think about how much I actually do want a child and can’t afford to have one as a single parent earning what I do and that made me sad.
Is this where we can talk about our Baby Rabies? (I picked this phrase up on yesterday’s LR, I’m stealing it forever now.) Do other women get this against all logical reason?
I’m not in a relationship, nevermind married (I have a thing where I think I’d like to be married before children), and I’m still pretty young, but sweet jesus do I want a baby right this god damn second.
The logical part of my brain says I can’t have a baby right now, and I know I don’t want to be a single mother (I’m the child of one, its not fun.), and I know I have so much time and there’s 101 million things I want to do before babies; but then the hormones take over and all I can think about is being pregnant and what I’d call my babies and how fucking cute they would be.
I have never had this but am really scared that I will. (I do not want children; the thought of having children distresses me; even the thought of my friends having babies distresses me. This may be a weird brain issue.) I do not want to wake up one day with a weird hormonal urge to get pregnant.
I wonder if it does happen like that? I don’t know tbh; I think I’ve pretty much always wanted children, there was a few years as a teenager where I was thinking do I/don’t I, and I very firmly came down on I Do in the end. So I think there’s a part of me that also just sick of waiting, like my body and hormones are like ‘Yayyy you’re a grown up now, TIME FOR BABIES’, but like no, not yet!
I’d love to hear from some other women who got baby rabid after not wanting kids, I know my SIL wasn’t crazy about children, and then in her late 30s changed her mind and now has two; but TBH the certainty that I feel about wanting children makes me think that the women who don’t want children probably feel the same amount of certainty, and it makes me respect their choices.
I did change my mind! I did not want babies for pretty much my whole life. I had a terrible relationship with my parents. Once I entered a comfortable, steady relationship with a good man, however, I went totally 180 and my body feels like it’s begging me to make babies! It’s both hormonal and social for me, I guess.
That is quite a relief for me, as I have a reasonably good relationship with my parents and have been happily with my boyfriend for seven years, and I have yet to experience an urge to have babies, so hopefully it will not change drastically.
I’ve been with my spouse for almost 20 years, and my relationship with my parents is fine, and I have never experienced even the slightest bit of baby desire. I’m almost 40, so I’m assuming if it was gonna happen, it would’ve by now.
A friend of mine who very much does not want children (and is getting her tubes tied to prevent it) has told me she occasionally gets baby rabies. She says it’s very odd in that her brain is still 100% no-babies but her body just starts screaming “BABY NOW”. She says that’s part of the allure of having her tubes tied, so she can just dismiss it as not possible rather than once again having to think about whether or not she actually wants a baby before realizing once again that she doesn’t.
I did this too, no regrets here! It means that I don’t lose an hour drunkenly explaining to myself that a mixed academic from alcoholic, abusive parents should not parent because the moving-around alone would be rough enough on the kid without everything else.
Literally why I have an IUD: because I know that if I got pregnant I would have a very hard time aborting it (I likely would anyway, because I don’t want to be a parent!) and the IUD has a super-low failure rate without depending on me doing anything. I really really just do not want to have to make that choice.
I had the opposite! I wanted babies SO BAD in my early 20’s but knew I wasn’t ready, and the older I got the less I wanted kids, and now I’m 36 and I’m pretty damn sure I don’t want kids.
I got scared of this when I was researching various forms of permanent birth control, and found forums full of women saying “I regret doing it, now I desperately want a child.” I started thinking of it as a possible side effect of the procedure, like, here’s your 1% risk of an allergic reaction, and maybe this 5% risk of baby rabies (good phrase, yes), okay, I can live with that. Didn’t end up going through with it (thanks Obama, for making my insurance cover the thing I actually wanted!) but I still think of it that way, as an unlikely but possible side effect of basing all my life decisions on not wanting children, and that makes it feel more deal-with-able. (ugh SUCH a Ravenclaw.)
I know. I *know* (read this in Sybil Fawlty’s voice, if you like.) I’ve never been in a relationship and at least half of the ones I observe don’t make me *want* to be in a relationship, and if I had a kid I’d plop us squarely below the poverty line and we wouldn’t have anywhere to live (thanks, greater Boston rents!) but I’ve got names picked out and I go through situations in my mind (teasing at school, parking lots, sleepovers, putting clasps on cupboards) and plan what I’d do and I don’t even mind crying babies on public transit any more, I’m all, “Oh, poor little thing, it’s difficult getting used to the world.”
I am running out of time so with any luck these urges will cool down a bit. Or I could have Miracle Gin Baby and worry about all the logistics when the child and I come to them!
Oh man. I met a guy over the weekend and for the first time ever I wanted to have a baby with someone (its not going to happen, but a girl can dream), and now I’m in baby overdrive.
Its weird for me now that a surprise baby wouldn’t completely be the end of my life; like yeah it’d be tough and would suck, especially with the kind of idiots I tend to sleep with; but I’m an adult now and I’m done with education, so its not like I’d have to drop out of school or something. I’m now that weird person that talks to strangers children on the bus and whenever I hear a crying baby I just want to pick it up and make it all better! Its a bit crazy how the instinct and hormones just take over!
I was my mothers last chance baby; she has told me this quite explicitly. She was already a single mother of my brother and for about two years she was trying to tell herself she didn’t want another baby. And then I came along.
I’m not spiritual at all, but I do have a bit of belief in things happening for a reason, I’ve been told that there’s never a ‘right time’ to have a baby, and if you really want one, just let it happen and deal with the life consequences later. I’m gonna wait a few more years before I say fuck it and just do it though. I hope.
Aside… Sybil Fawlty!! “I know! I know. I knooooow.”
You get older and you’re all, “Oh, Sybil. Oh, Polly. Basil was an enormous toolbag and you two had to keep the place running.”
I’ve been pretty much terrified of my biological clock running out since I was 22 and was told I’d probably have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. I don’t have even the tiniest prospect of marriage, and I’d have to be so much nervier to go it alone (my parents alone would be hell on wheels without some kind of relationship/co-parent between).
I’m living the cliche, in that my baby rabies kicked in just before I turned 30, and now I coo over other people’s children and animals to just a horrible extent.
If I could afford it I would be pregnant right now, but I’m not, and so I watch my sister have kids and feel sad for myself that I’m in my 30s and it might never happen
Yep. I saw my cousins and their little girls last weekend and on the one hand I know kids are noisy and demanding and constantly pooping/puking/getting sick and making you sick, and they won’t eat when you cook for them or stay in bed when you put them to bed, and on the other hand, compared to many emotional-labor-intensive relationships, it’s so rewarding, when they nestle into you as you read to them, or when you’re able to teach them something. And I already worry all the time and don’t like going out to brunch or concerts anyway. The big thing would be the sleep deprivation. And the fact that I would probably have to hunt down a second job and some side gigs and work myself into an early grave trying to provide for the child like one of the parent figures in a Noel Streatfeild novel.
Elsewhere in the realm of idiotic recommendations, the NYC police commissioner has instructed people to stop sleeping on subways because thefts have been occurring.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bratton-warns…
How about instead of waking up riders, police actually catch the thieves? *facepalm*
That is not a good idea and I appreciate that no attempt was made by the author to make it seem like a good idea.
CARMELLA. So glad to see her loveliness again!!! I love all ToastDogs, but she has a special place in my heart.
ETA:
Also, really, CDC? In my view (#barrenspinster4lyfe) PREGNANCY, not drinking, is the fucking health hazard.
But pregnancy is a health hazard to the woman, not the precious possibly-male fetus she might one day have! I like how the CDC also assumes the woman will definitely keep any fetus she happens to end up with.
My friend was trying to have a baby all last year. She’s turning 40 now, so an older age to try, and she was not having a lot of luck. But she gave up drinking, caffeine, OTC meds, everything, for the whole year. Even antibiotics when she was sick. She tracked her ovulation down to the hour. She had plans for when she wanted to conceive so that the child would be the right age starting school because of some study she read. She was stressed constantly and disappointed every month when she got her period. Made herself miserable for about 18 months. I haven’t asked lately because it’s a sensitive subject, and we’re currently communicating primarily via text, but I think they’ve given up. They’re getting a dog.
Pregnancy is a hell of a scam on women. Pressure if you want it, scorn if you don’t. You’re supposed to bend your whole life around some possible fetus in some possible future, apparently. And then if you get pregnant and keep it, you have to push a human person out of your body at the end!
“precious possibly-male fetus”
I really believe that a large portion of misogynistic anti-choice rhetoric is centred on the assumption that all gestating foetuses are male. It’s Male Tears for the Penii that Could Be.
That is the ultimate dicks before chicks attitude.
My favorite thing from Loveline, and the only thing I still remember from that show, is when Dr. Drew called pregnancy the most common STD and me and me wife laughed really hard
I will certainly leave my adblocker off if it increases the chances that I get more of those “Make sure Trump never gets elected” banners. I’ve only seen them once.
Nicole: if there’s an issue with ad content (I got some transphobic content showing up a few weeks ago, from Outbrain, I think; forgot to get a screenshot though) can we also send that to you? What’s useful there?
Also I really really appreciate that you talk about ads revenue. I never use adblockers because I think they’re fundamentally unethical, but it’s always good to have a reminder that ads are what pays for all the cool shit I read here.
I have my adblocker off but I would love to ban the Outbrain stuff, just because the pictures they use for that “most evil men as children” link are AWFUL. Blurgh.
lol i ALWAYS click on those ‘evil men’ slideshows and they never include the thumbnail of the picture i wanted to see! RELATED: I HAVE A LIZARD BRAIN
Oh Mallory, what would we do with you and your lizard brain. (Not have the Toast, probably.)
Have you seen the one that’s like, “unbelievable bodies”, and the cover photo is a woman’s head directly photoshopped onto a foot? SUCH A TEASE.
Ugh ugh ugh why can’t Driscoll just get a non-church-related job and focus on learning not to be an asshole rather than trying to rebuild his brand?
Probably because if he worked in the public sector he might need to answer to a woman tbh.
Seriously, I have a few friends who love him and I just do not get it. They always end up sounding just like Trump supporters (“he’s not perfect but he tells it like it is, the world needs him, etc.”)
Yeah. I mean, I want to believe that he has learned a lot, but it doesn’t seem like it.
“why can’t Driscoll just get a non-church-related job”
Because manipulating fearful people is all he knows how to do. And he likes it. Where else could he be a narcissist and get paid for it?
I hate him. SO MUCH. And even my conservatively religious seattle friends hate him! MHC was a few blocks from me and it made Sundays an absolute hell for the neighborhood because of parking.
To him, he hasn’t done anything wrong, pastoral work is his calling, and he wants to get on with it, but obviously not in Seattle because of everything that went down.
I can’t help but wonder how long this will last. And I wonder how his attitude has taken a toll on his wife and kids (especially his daughter), how much they’ve internalized.
Because he’s a megalomaniac and because running a megachurch = mega bucks.
Speaking of money for the Toast!
Were the tote bags ever put up for sale? Did I just miss this entirely over the holidays (totally possible!)? Or will there be tote bag opportunities in the upcoming future?
They are not up for sale yet.
Okay, good to know. Thanks, Nicole!
Was coming down here to say I would love the opportunity to buy more the Toast swag, generally. T-shirts, tote bags, bumper stickers, blah blah blah… would love to have all those things, and would be willing to pay way exaggerated prices for them as a way of donating. (I also keep the ads unblocked though.)
SAAAAAME
A few years ago, there was some medical advisory board that advised treating all women as “pre-pregnant.” That was the actual phrase. I can’t decide if this CDC thing is better or worse.
SPOILER ALERT: That was also the CDC. hahahahahahahhahahahahahasetseverythingonfire
yeah, that was a Bush administration thing, I can still recall seething with rage at his punchable little face over that.
(as a friend said on facebook last night, if I’m pre-pregnant, I’m also pre-safe sex, pre-Plan B, and pre-abortion.)
I hadn’t realized it was literally a decade ago, not “a few years.” Where does the time go…
Based on the timing of that article, I’m going to assume that ridiculous thought process got into my developing mind and, as a result, I get so weirdly concerned by warnings for those who “are pregnant or may become pregnant.”
Because I get really weirdly concerned about that warning, and it’s illogical so I can’t really explain it. But even when not having sex, or using reliable protection, I think “theoretically I may become pregnant because I’m female, so… should I be worried about getting the flu shot?” I’m going to blame the CDC from 2006 for that now.
My favorite is ads for medications to treat symptoms of menopause, which should not be taken by “women who are pregnant or may become pregnant.”
Bring on the ads!
Argh my mug fell off the handle while I was drinking a huge latte and I might have killed my poor computer.
NOOO, the most unexpected betrayal!
I’m sorry for laughing out loud at your misfortune.
CARMELLA YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT AND ~SO GROWN UP~
I’ve been holding off on donating until I get all my surgery bills paid, but for when I’m able to send money to The Toast again, is it better for you to get a lump sum or a recurring donation?
Someone asked a similar question above and of course the best solution is probably to email Nicole and ask her, but someone mentioned that it might be better to do a recurring donation because then they can plan around it? This question is relevant to my interests, because while I currently make $0, I would like to donate regularly to the Toast once my graduate fellowship is finished and I have managed to acquire for myself 1 Real Job.
The reactions to the OJ Simpson show are fascinating to me, because they’re really bringing up the differences between Canada and America- all my American friends are talking about how they remember the trial coverage, how everyone was talking about it, how their grade school teachers had the verdict playing on TV in class. I don’t remember ANYTHING about the trial- I don’t think I even knew who OJ Simpson was until a good years five years after the fact.
Yeah, this is one of the few times I’m glad I was in a uber-sheltered environment with basically zero TV access (and…I guess not any friends at school who were exposed to the coverage and might talk about it, but that’s good because I was in second grade).
I’m as amused anyone at the idea that anyone is going to listen to the CDC about drinking, but after reading a bajillion objections to the recommendations, I’m ready to start the backlash to the backlash.
So much of the criticism I’m seeing focuses on the “But I don’t want to get pregnant!/I’d have an abortion!” Well, super, and you should be on birth control, as recommended by the CDC and anyone with a brain. The abortion part is true of a certain segment of the population (particularly young media people writing these criticisms), but hardly a given. Plenty of women want to get pregnant, or are ambivalent, or don’t want to get pregnant but would never have an abortion. It’s hardly assuming that all women are just vessels for fetuses to say that it’s a good idea to be on birth control if you’re not planning a pregnancy, and if you are planning a pregnancy, it might be a good idea to do so thoughtfully to reduce the risks to the baby.*
*I say baby, not fetus, because the CDC doesn’t care about fetuses. It cares about and is measuring outcomes in babies, and framing it as “the CDC cares more about fetuses than my rights” completely negates the actual existence of people with FAS.
The CDC’s job is to offer broad-based recommendations to reduce public health risk as low as possible. They’re a conservative agency. And as the backlash suggests, people are clearly smart enough to figure out whether the recommendations are relevant to them or not.
Caveat to my fighting words: I in no way followed this advice with either of my children. In fact, I was the CDC’s nightmare with my second: Not using birth control, drinking casually and no idea I was pregnant until well into the critical window for brain development in the first trimester. She’s fine.
But part of the purpose of public health recommendations is to make recommendations that are somewhat based in reality, that will have a *real* impact on public health. This is why public health advocates roundly denounce abstinence only sex ed, for example–while effective in theory, it is awful advice that no one follows and has zero health impact, which makes it a poor public health program/recommendation. In addition to just being super sexist, these CDC recommendations fall in the same boat–so tone deaf to everyday life that statistically no one will follow them.
This, I agree with. No one is likely to listen.
There are a lot of unrealistic health recommendations out there, though, on all topics from safe infant sleep to food and exercise. I don’t see this one as unique in that regard.
Yeah, and I can’t condone the reasoning of “no one’s likely to listen, so what’s the point in trying to warn anyone?”
I mean, that’s how public health intervention work though. You need ones that are grounded in reality. “Take this pill or don’t drink” is not grounded in reality.
As this thread has illustrated, though, it’s not saying “birth control pill or no alcohol for you.” It went on to say “Talk with their health care provider about their plans for pregnancy, their alcohol use, and ways to prevent pregnancy if they are not planning to get pregnant.”
You can fault it for being too generalized toward straight cis women, and certainly for a bad infograph, but its message is being misconstrued in a lot of places.
(small voice) I followed abstinence only. But I realize I am an outlier–and lucky, in a sense.
There will always be some people who do,and for whom it works! But it’s like “drank a bottle of whisky a day and smoked like a chimney and lived to be eighty” – public health policy should be based on evidence, and evidence means the effect on the population as measured by robust figures, not on any individual.
I think there’s an important difference between an individual who chooses to practice abstinence (you do you!) and a school that teaches abstinence to every student.
I did too! But I am referring to studies that show that there is no statistical decerase on pregnancies, stds, or sexual activity as a result of abstinence only programming. That’s why they teach abstinence plus (or would if the fed gov funded best practices). Because the ideal is not realistic for large amounts of ppl and preaching it doesn’t actually accomplish anything.
So much of the criticism I’m seeing focuses on the “But I don’t want to get pregnant!/I’d have an abortion!” Well, super, and you should be on birth control, as recommended by the CDC and anyone with a brain.
— Some people don’t want to get pregnant & are uninterested or unable to take birth control. I don’t think this is what “anyone with a brain” does unequivocally.
I mean, that’s fine. But it’s sort of reality that such a strategy is likely to lead to pregnancy, if you’re having sex with a person of the appropriate gametes.
Not taking birth control does not necessarily mean having unprotected sex & therefore pregnancy. Condoms also prevent pregnancy.
My wording was poor. I should have said, “be using birth control.” Not “be on birth control.”
The CDC is agnostic on type of birth control, as I quoted below.
Fair enough.
if you’re having sex with a person of the appropriate gametes.
… which lots of women aren’t.
This feels exactly like the time my doctor went on and one at me about how I should be on the pill, and after I had said no about six times,he asked what birth control I was using, and I said lesbianism, and he squirmed and muttered, well, OK, that should do it.
People who are drinking heavily enough to cause FAS probably have serious alcohol dependency issues. Moderate drinking is pretty unlikely to cause serious disability, or Europe wouldn’t have survived the Middle Ages.
Also, an adage like ‘all sexually active women should be on birth control just in case’ leaves out sexually active women who are not having sex with men or people who could impregnate them. Which is a pretty big, exclusionary presumption.
Agreed — which also brings to mind the directions on the Monistat I bought yesterday that say, in response to the question “can my partner get a yeast infection from me?” – “no, HE probably won’t, but he should wash HIS genitals nonetheless.”
Again, I’d fault headlines over the CDC on this one. From their report:
“For this Vital Signs report, scientists from CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities analyzed data from the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth, which gathers information on family life, marriage, divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of birth control, and men’s and women’s health. National estimates of alcohol-exposed pregnancy were calculated among 4,303 non-pregnant, non-sterile women ages 15–44 years. A woman was considered to be at risk for an alcohol-exposed pregnancy if in the past month she was not sterile, her partner was not known to be sterile, she had vaginal sex with a male, drank any alcohol, and did not use birth control. A woman was considered to be trying to get pregnant if a desired pregnancy was the reason she and her partner stopped using contraception.”
And their tee-totaling recommendation is for any woman who is pregnant or might be pregnant, which would exclude women not having sex with people who could impregnant them.
Then they should chat with whoever made the infographic because “unintended pregnancy” is under the “any woman” category heading.
You’re totally right! Bad infographic, bad!
I do think you have a bit of a point: when people get pregnant and then go “we weren’t even trying!”, my attitude is basically: well, if you weren’t trying NOT to… you were kinda trying.
The problem, I think, is that it encourages women to think of the fact that they are potential baby-makers aaaaaaall the time. Especially since the graphic names pregnany and STDs (!) as risks of alcohol for all women! That’s what’s gotten everyone’s dander up, I think.
I do understand the objections, and I think the graphic presents it in a clumsy way, for sure. That’s a big misstep. On the other hand… it’s not wrong to say that alcohol influences risky behavior like unprotected sex, which can lead to pregnancy and STDs. Would the graphic be unoffensive if it had outlined those steps more clearly?
Also, if it weren’t gendered, because in as much as that is true, it’s true for everyone.
It’s one of those shitty realities, though, that women always have to deal with the consequences of unintended pregnancy and men can avoid them completely. :/
Tbh I wish it were were more common to discuss these things without gendering them. I know “woman” has fewer syllables but “people who can get pregnant” and “women” is a Venn diagram with two circles, not one.
Exactly! The list could be: risks of alcohol to EVERYONE. And it could even include impaired judgement and risk evaluation that could lead to unintended pregnancy. People for whom that’s a possiblity would be like yeah that applies to me or nope skip on to the next bullet point.
I agree, but I can see the trouble for a public health agency. There are a lot of people who have pretty whacked-out ideas of why they can’t get pregnant. (I’m on my period! I haven’t had a scare before!) Wording like “people who can get pregnant” would likely make a lot of people think, “Oh, not like me then,” when in fact that’s the exact audience who needs to hear the message.
secondursula is right – that second column saying “risks of alcohol to everyone” would probably solve a lot of these problems.
I’m not expecting revolutionary gender politics from the CDC, no. But it is very discouraging, as a person with a uterus who is not a woman, to see other people (especially commenters here which is usually cool) adopting the gendered language of the CDC unthinkingly. We aren’t going to change language at the federal level without changing it on a local level first.
I do think I lost of sight of that in the discussion, and I apologize. It’s always good to have a reminder to check your language 🙂
Not really, for me: I mean, unprotected sex between (at least) two fertile people of opposite genders carries a risk of pregnancy. Pregnancy would be the direct result of that sex. Unprotected sex however is never a direct result of a woman drinking: for one, there’s at least one more person involved. Also, I’ve been drunk plenty of times, and that’s never lead to unprotected sex, because there was never a risk of it leading to unprotected sex (as long as I had a say in it, anyway): sex may lower inhibitions, but it does not irrevocably lead to risky behavior.
Yes! I think this is a key aspect of what’s so wrong with the CDC recommendations. Their message implies that drinking directly causes the negative outcomes of unprotected sex, when there is that crucial extra step of the drunk person making an active decision. Just like with driving drunk, like I try to explain above. And if there ISN’T the extra step of the drunk woman making an active decision, then that’s just rape, and that’s where the message becomes victim-blaming.
Hm, not irrevocably, no, but it certainly increases the risk of risky behavior. (There’s a graceful sentence for you.) I am just not reading this 1:1 direct correlation in the infographic. It says “risk,” which seems accurate.
I feel like a crucial part of this recommendation is that women should *on* birth control, rather than *using* birth control.
Just because I don’t want to take hormones any more doesn’t mean I’m having unprotected sex. And women who drink and consent to sex can also have protected sex without being *on* birth control.
Agree that is an important distinction, but I think the CDC is agnostic on type of birth control. Per their report, women can – “Talk with their health care provider about their plans for pregnancy, their alcohol use, and ways to prevent pregnancy if they are not planning to get pregnant.”
Sounds like that would include condoms.
Thanks for highlighting the actual recommendation’s language. Up until a few minutes ago, I had only read commentary and news articles discussing it…which have tended to suggest that birth control use can only be medication. As we have discussed in this thread, their recommendation is definitely problematic, but you’re 100% right that they aren’t discounting condoms (or other non-medication options) as birth control.
Yeah, I was lazy in my original post’s wording, too! Including condoms brings male responsibility into it, which is something I agree should have been highlighted more by both the CDC and the media coverage. It makes a certain amount of sense to target women with these recommendations, but a mention of counseling sexually active men on these issues would not have gone amiss.
I’m glad you’re highlighting the information that the outraged headlines and their recap articles are leaving out.
I do think it’s important to remember that the CDC is thinking of the entire national population, a huge part of which includes many people who don’t have the leisure or access to such lovely sites as The Toast and other educational materials to fully understand the correlation and balance between what may be a part of their lifestyle taken for granted (getting wasted on a Friday night) and those undesirable consequences.
I definitely hate them for suggesting drinking too much leads to sexual assault or domestic violence, though.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head to why I’m being an annoying about this. The criticism is awfully filtered through a particular middle-class/childfree/educated lens and that’s just not the reality for a lot of people.
I agree with many of the critiques of the presentation (esp. that infographic!), but I just don’t see the recommendations as controlling or condescending. Conservative toward risk? Yes. Potentially unreachable? Yes. But ultimately understandable for a public health agency.
While I agree with you that that’s technically right, in that people who can get pregnant having sex with people who can get them pregnant without taking steps to prevent pregnancy are at risk of getting pregnant and should act accordingly, the actual recommendation only makes sense when you assume that the goal is to increase the birth of non-FAS babies rather than reduce the number of babies born with FAS.
If you want to get the number of kids being born with FAS to zero, this recommendation won’t do that because birth control fails regularly. To actually get the number of kids being born with FAS to zero you’d recommend that 1) people at risk of getting pregnant but not intending to get pregnant use birth control 2) pregnant people avoid drinking and 3) drinkers abort unintended babies. Of course, loads of women who drink have healthy unintended babies, and I personally wouldn’t make that recommendation to anyone, but if they truly wanted to prevent all FAS those are the only recommendations that actually would accomplish that. But that’s not the recommendation they made and I think it’s worth examining and critiquing why they made a less-effective recommendation and why they phrased it the way they did.
Keeping ads out of my life was a conscious decision I made a few years ago, and it has made my life measurably better. I didn’t think they affected me but now that they’re gone it turns out I am happier and more satisfied with my self and my life without them, who knew? I don’t watch TV on cable anymore (ilu netflix), cancelled some magazine subscriptions, and consider adblockers a true blessing. So THANK YOU MARCO for letting me contribute directly to my favorite website automatically so I can stop feeling guilty about being a mooch.
Last night I watched the first four episodes of UnReal on Hulu and I am better for it.
First thing I requested when the BF set up the computer to “find tv shows for me to watch at my own pace”. I am super excited to start watching!
I watched the first three. I’m glad it’s finally available to those of us who get our TV exclusively through streaming sites. 🙂
Speaking of giving the Toast money, did I miss the tote bag sales? I took some time off the internet in November and december so it is completely possible i did
Also, rereading my comment it seems to imply that what the toast already does is not enough for my money but I do not think that at all! Love you all, love the website, adblocker is off forever and my monthly small gift will continue into perpetuity
I haven’t seen any announcements about the totes yet (other than “coming soon!”) … so I don’t think you missed anything!
Rachel Held Evans got told off by Jerry Falwell on twitter for writing this piece on Trump and scripture (it’s a short, genuinely funny read) which was probably the best advertising he could do for her.
Ooh this is great. Thanks for sharing!
Holy moly, I didn’t realize you meant Falwell Jr. at first and I was REALLY impressed that she got told off by Falwell from beyond the grave…
Ha! I get my Falwells mixed up. Probably earns me a stoning, or at least becoming a pillar of salt.
I might have to share the Facebook and risk the Facebook fight. I already shared the piece from First Things about how Trump is Nikabrik’s candidate.
That is wonderful!
What a good article.
That was excellent!
(When I saw clips from Liberty, I kept thinking he was about to say “2 Corinthians walk into a bar. . .”)
Just want to say I totally support the ads — I love this site and I love the content here and I love the conversations here, and I don’t mind a few more ads if it helps you all bring us more of what I love.
Re: CDC. The male parallel would be a warning to men not to wear tight underwear because it might render them infertile. Since their only purpose in life is to produce viable sperm for procreation, this is obviously a major public health concern.
Also, they should cut down or eliminate drinking if they’re actively trying too. You get more and better quality sperm that way.
There was a whole thing a few years ago about men not using laptops directly over the goods for the same reason. But that seemed to be a “studies show” headline and not a “CDC recommendations poster/handout” thing.
If anyone wants to do some more general raging about recommendations for pregnant women, here’s a choice quote from an old nytimes article : Dr. Jeffrey L. Ecker, the chairman of the committee on obstetrics practice for A.C.O.G. (possibly former, article is from 2013 taking about Expecting Better by Emily Oster)
“I wouldn’t equate offering a recommendation, even a recommendation that doesn’t have the strongest possible evidence, with restricting someone’s freedom,” Dr. Ecker said.
Yes, let’s make recommendations without evidence, that’s a good way to get people to trust us. Solid plan. Telling people not to do things for no scientific reason doesn’t restrict freedoms at all!
We’ve just had another report in the UK recommending that pregnant women consume no alcohol at all, rather than the old advice which was that one drink a week was unlikely to hurt. I don’t know – I don’t really have a problem with it drinking, but it seems EXTREMELY unlikely to me that foetal alcohol syndrome is caused by people not understanding the difference between “very occasional drinking” and “heavy drinking”, rather than people with serious mental health problems or alcohol dependency issues not getting adequate support.
The statement “no amount of x has been proven safe” is very popular in the states for pregnancy recommendations and is just the biggest load of bullshit. Like, driving is definitely UNsafe and yet roads around me still have 75mph speedlimits when we know fewer people die if the limits are 55mph, but let’s focus on what kinds of cheese are safe for pregnant women to eat (of course, I bet no amount of any kind of cheese has been PROVEN safe, because that’s an absurd standard that virtually nothing is going to meet.)
Life has risks, yo. Some of them increase with pregnancy, some don’t, and sometimes risky activity A reduces the risk of B. This whole “zero risk pregnancy” approach to recommendations can fuck off as far as I’m concerned.
I feel like writing literary historical fiction doesn’t get half the shit that writing literary fantasy novels (though don’t get me wrong, I love the trashy ones of either genre too, a lady needs her trashy novels every once in a while) do, so everyone should just go out and read Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria for me.
I just really want everyone to read it OK?
I already checked it out of the library once but did not have time to read it, so I will definitely be reading it at some point.
One time, my sister gave me a book and told me I should really really read it, so I did, and when I gave it back to her she asked me what I thought and I was like, “I don’t know, I didn’t really like it” and she was all, “I know right??” THEN WHY DID YOU HAVE ME READ IT
Turns out she just wanted someone else to complain about it with. Anyway, now I don’t trust book recommendations unless someone explicitly says it’s a good book.
Have we talked about the food poisoning/contamination thing yet? Thoughts?
Personally, you will have to pry my oysters, rare meat, and runny eggs from my cold dead hands. However, I do think the disparity between the way E. coli and salmonella have been dealt with is bizarre and frustrating, and the lack of oversight/inspection is ridiculous. Like…this should not be a super complicated fix, at least in theory?
The trick on the chicken side is that the processors would probably have to slow the fuck down with their line speeds (which would be great for the chickens, the workers, and the consumers, but not so good for big corporate interests) The chicken industry is made up of a very small number of giant producers that usually have a vertical monopoly from farm to slaughterhouse (which is why small producers struggle to get meat to consumers). On the other hand, the USDA allows small producers to process something like 10,000 birds a year and sell to consumers only under state oversight, which doesn’t seem like a very high concern about how chickens are processed generally.
On the other foods side, my father in law works as a food scientist at a snack company, and it’s interesting how much of a challenge it is to keep pathogens out of food- want to use air to puff oil on something? Better have filters that catch bacteria on the input! His plant seems to be inspected all the time, but those inspections and standards are largely driven by retailers, not the federal government.
Aha! I knew there would be someone who could give a good explanation as to what the solution would actually entail–I figured it was more complicated than it seemed, but hadn’t thought the logistics through.
At this point in my life I’ve eaten so many raw eggs (probably like 3/wk since so much Japanese home cooking goes “throw a raw egg on it and serve”) that getting sick seems like a staggering improbability. Like, of course “I’ve never been sick off an egg” is only true till it’s not, but it’s hard for me to take the risk really seriously since it’s never happened to me.
Right? Unless there’s a documented outbreak happening that can be traced to a specific source (I haven’t been eating at Chipotle lately), my attitude is kind of like, okay, you COULD get sick, but millions of people in the country are eating these things every day, and most of them are fine, so I will accept the non-zero degree of risk and go about my business.
I think the aversion to foods that aren’t completely “safe” is largely a psychological thing. Like, my mom will not try sushi. At all. If you ask her why, she’ll go on about parasites and contamination and the dangers of raw fish, etc. Even when I point out the vast number of people throughout the world who eat sushi each day with no ill effects, she sticks to her guns. I am forced to conclude that she is just viscerally squicked out by the idea of eating something contaminated, despite the low likelihood of actually experiencing a bad outcome.
Well, the risk of getting listeria while pregnant (which is significantly higher than when not pregnant) is still roughly the same as the probability of getting into a fatal car accident in my state. Given that listeria only kills you some of the time, and I’m still driving, I’m not going to spend my time worrying about food borne illnesses too much. I aim for seatbelt equivalent precautions rather than never drive anywhere level precautions.
I was going to be like WHO IS THIS IMPOSTOR THAT IS NOT SANSA?! And then I read the caption and relented.
I’d been missing Carmella pics so YAY!
This is more OT than LR, and trigger warning for sexual assault content. More below.
Is anyone else reading the Live blog of the Ghomeshi trial? Because I could use some Internet commiseration, if anyone else feels up to it.
I read Alyshah Hasham’s (Toronto Star reporter) livetweets on the first day. OMG. I’ve gone back to read some of her tweets from today’s proceedings. Of course, the women are going to be put on trial here by the defense, and they have been so far. Doesn’t help the fourth woman whose case will be heard in June, either. It just affirms why those who’ve been sexually assaulted, raped, and suchlike never report it.
I also feel for Jian’s mother, sister, and niece. Lord knows what’s been going through their heads all this time. His mom because she’d just buried her husband when Jian was fired, and having to hear about how he’d hurt other women for so long. Similar for his sister and niece.
Alyshah’s Twitter is here, btw, for those interested (very detailed) – https://twitter.com/alysanmati
Thank you. I have been following the cbc liveblog (http://live.cbc.ca/Event/Jian_Ghomeshi_trial_Day_3), but the twitter feed is great.
Lucy DeCoutere is doing such a good job of navigating her cross. I have so many feels for her right now.
I am having a really hard time with this in part because I hated Jian Ghomeshi for so long, long long LONG before Q even existed. So part of me wants to crow at his abasement, and another part of me just wants to weep because this entire thing is so messed up.
Do both?
I don’t mind ads themselves, but I wonder about all the rando URLs that show up in my JavaScript blocker/privacy plugin and to what degree they track. Anyway, off to set up a monthly donation, because I still love you.
So I’m pretty sure it was via another link round-up that I read Nan Robertson’s story about getting Toxic Shock Syndrome, and now there are 4 cases clustered in western Michigan? (Enough so to get noticed by the CDC and FDA.) And of course, despite the fact that at least three of the girls (they were teenagers) were using a particular brand of super absorbent tampon–but of course that can’t be identified by name. It never stops amazing me how hard it actually is to get dangerous things* off the market because the agencies meant to protect us are so hamstrung. Yay, capitalism!
*I know it’s possible it wasn’t the tampons and this probably isn’t even the most egregious example, but it does seriously make me so mad that we allow companies to keep selling unsafe products for so long.
Thank you Marco for the return of recurring donations!
Days late, but I’ve just been looking up Omega 3 rich foods because supplements are expensive, and the British Dietitians Association has their warning about fish potentially containing high levles of mercury, and recommendations for portions divided into:
– women who are pregnant or planning a baby
– under 16 year olds
– women who may become pregnant or are breastfeeding
– women “past childbearing age or not intending to have children”, men etc.
It takes so little to put a bit more thought into something. See CDC, it can be done!
I’m curious about the ads. I have disabled my ad blocker for you (something I haven’t done for anyone but the Toast) but I don’t click on the ads. Does it still make you money if I just see the ads? The ads are pretty clearly targeted to me. If I happen to need to order some expensive science thing for work and click through an ad for that company from your site, does that help you?