AngryBrownButch

I’m wrapping up my holiday visit with my parents, so here are some quick links of notes.

• Life Support for Feminist Health Care?, on the more-than-worrisome decline of available feminist health care for women, especially low income women, in the US. From the article: “A true societal commitment to quality, funded health care for poor and marginalized women … still eludes us.” (Found via Feministing)
• If you’re a New Yorker like me, you’ve undoubtedly heared those awful words over the subway train PA system: “We’re being held in the station due to a sick passenger.” After once seeing a man die on the subway (an awful experience), I always wonder and worry about what’s going on and how serious the situation is. Well, according to the MTA, the most common “sick passenger” situation is people fainting because they’re on crazy “diets” that amount to not eating at all for big chunks of time. So now when I’m feeling murderous* on a stopped train, I know to blame fatphobia, most likely tempered with a good dose of sexism. (Or, I can just Blame the Patriarchy, of course. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

  UPDATE: After reading other bloggers and media outlets’ take on this, I’m starting to agree with them – maybe this is a bit of non-scientific woman-blaming going on. After all, the “statistic” about the prevalence of diet-related fainting only comes from one person’s observations and conjecture, rather than actual tracking. However, I have to say, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about many people in NYC dieting in unhealthy ways, even to the point of fainting. And that’s not woman-blaming; like I said above, it’s fatphobia and patriarchy blaming.

• For the first time since the Beefeaters began guarding the Tower of London, a woman will join their ranks. Happily to me, she’ll be wearing the same awesome uniform as all the others.
• CNN accidentally ran the caption “Where’s Obama?” during an ad for a segment on Osama bin Laden. Oops! Senator Barack Obama’s spokeperson responds: “Though I’d note that the ‘s’ and ‘b’ keys aren’t all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake.”

* Note that my murderous feelings are not directed towards sick passengers themselves, of course. However, other New Yorkers might understand and agree that there are few things more maddening than being stuck in a subway tunnel for an indefinite amount of time, especially when one is running late, as one almost always is when the subway is involved, and especially when the conductor reassures you that “we should be moving shortly” for minutes on end.