niyad
niyad's JournalOhhhh myyyy, we have MUCH more work to do than even I thought!!! On our own
side, no less.
Last night, I went to our local Drinking Liberally group, with a number of regulars, one former regular, and a newbie. One of the regulars just astounded me going completely off the rails ( in my view, anyway. Not sure if the others saw it quite as starkly as I did.). She started off by saying how Pres. Biden just drove her nuts because he can't talk, can't give a speech, can't seem to think on his feet, looks confused. I pointed out that every one of those statements is a reichwing talking point. She said, "I am not a rightwinger.". I replied, "But you are repeating their talking points. Did you even listen to his State of the Union message?" She didn't even know what I was talking about. Several of the other people also suggested that she google the SOTU. I did not even mention the Valley Forge speech or his D-Day speech.
Her next jaw-dropper was saying that, in her mind, Hunter Biden's case was far more serious than the, in her own words, "itty bitty miniscule" hush money case against #####, and that Hunter deserved a long prison term. And she said that FLOTUS had no business showing up at the trial. The others tried to reason with her, got nowhere.
She had never heard of leonard leo, or the federalist society, or how the handmaid got on the extreme court.
Still later, as we were talking about possible actions after the election, should the awful happen, she asked what would happen if Biden chose to behave like #####, and foment an insurrection. We all pointed out that Biden would not do such a thing. "But what if he does?" she persisted. And how Biden would probably not respond if #### fomented another insurrection.
I kept thinking about a scene in "1776", where Adams is talking to Franklin about how some of the other members are tearing apart Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence. He says, "So far, they have struck out 418 words and three paragraphs. And that is just our friends. God knows what the other side will do." (a bit paraphrased)
All this from one person, in one meeting, one who is self-identified as a Dem. I was appalled and frustrated, and sad. How do we address these levels of ignorance and lack of awareness?
Earlier today, I was going to post that, even in the unlikeliest places,
things can get better. Specifically, today/this month, Colorado Springs, previosly the home of the horrific, homophobic, Amendment 2, is now displaying Pride flags and banners all over downtown. Progress!!! Sadly, then I saw the OP about the CO gqp announcing to burn every Pride flag they see. I hope whoever starts this crap reaps exactly what they deserve.
A deliciously wicked thought just occurred to me. Convicted felon, the
RAPIST/TRAITOR**, did this to himself. I don't mean in the sense of being the one to sign the checks, etc. I mean, if he had just displayed his usual arrogance, his usual, "I can do anything I want, and who is going to stop me" cluelessness, his belief that his cultists will accept any of his sick, twisted, appalling behaviours, it would not even have occurred to him that he needed to make a hush money payment. This is the one thing I have never understood about this. His base does not give a damn what he does, and the rest of us are not surprised by anything he does. So WHY, in this one insignificant, brief (in all senses of the word) encounter, does he feel the need to pretend, to hush things up? Pretty sure malaria does not care.
I am reminded of an old spell, the ending line of which goes, "May he be brought down by his own hands."
Louisiana's Criminalization of Abortion Care Demands We Embrace Reproductive Justice
Louisiana’s Criminalization of Abortion Care Demands We Embrace Reproductive Justice
5/23/2024 by Deon Haywood
The people working overtime to maintain racial and gender hierarchies will not stop at the criminalization of abortion drugs—just like they didn’t stop with the banning of abortion.
The World Health Organization recommends two regimens for medication abortion: misoprostol alone or combined with another medication, mifepristone. (Soumyabrata Roy / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
On Tuesday, the Louisiana House passed legislation criminalizing two drugs commonly used for abortion care: mifepristone and misoprostol. The bill received final legislative passage Thursday, and the governor is expected to sign it into law any day now. Instead of working to address the maternal mortality crisis, the infant mortality crisis or the climate crisis (the list of crises goes on), Louisiana’s lawmakers are looking to lock up our neighbors for up to five years for possessing these life-saving drugs. The move is pigheaded, embarrassing and downright dangerous—but not surprising. Thirty-five years ago—at the height of the war on drug users and the HIV/AIDS crisis—a small collective realized how the public health institutions supposed to serve our communities had, at best, abandoned Black folks and, at worst, were actively terrorizing our communities. Women With a Vision’s foremothers took matters into their own hands, operating illegally for decades distributing sterile needles and condoms to those most at risk for HIV/AIDS infection and criminalization. Today, the organization my mother helped found, where I now serve as executive director, works at the intersection of public health, reproductive justice and criminalization—recognizing the ways racial capitalism, queerphobia and the patriarchy function together to isolate, blame, criminalize, erase and take. This week’s move to ban abortion pills in Louisiana is a continuation of the long tradition of infringing on the bodily autonomy of birthing people, Black folks in particular.
WWAV foremothers Danita Muse, Catherine Haywood and Deon Haywood with red AIDS ribbons in their hands, as featured in the Source in April 2001. (via Instagram)
Our lawmakers’ assault on our right to determine what we do with our bodies started with the enslavement of our ancestors, the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, and the taking of their land, and continues by criminalizing and incarcerating folks at the bottom of racial, gender and class hierarchies. Audre Lorde said, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.” Every day I’m reminded that our oppressions are woven together—each oppressive action reinforcing the one that came before and laying the groundwork for the next one. Two years ago, when the Supreme Court toppled Roe and Louisiana’s trigger ban went into effect, our history showed us the next step would be criminalization.
. . . .
Not long after Women With a Vision’s founding, a group of Black women and women of color were building the human rights framework today known as reproductive justice. They recognized the ways the abortion rights movement failed us and worked to bring our disparate movements together, knowing that the right to abortion was not enough. Their vision for a world where we all have the right to have children when and how we choose, not have children, and live in whole, healthy, thriving communities is a clarion call to counter the white supremacist vision driving the anti-abortion movement. Through a reproductive justice lens, we realize the movements to end mass criminalization and the war on drug users isn’t supplemental to the fight for abortion rights. It is only through embracing a vision for a whole, healthy, liberated future that we can put an end to the assault on our rights. Through a reproductive justice lens, we realize that when we partner with those most vulnerable, when we work as their accomplices, we aren’t just doing good deeds. We are moving towards collective liberation together, the only thing that will save us from the ever-present march of white supremacy. The war on drugs and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s are inextricably linked to the terrors of our politics today. And it is only through embracing the lessons learned during those fights—allyship, refusal, speech and dreaming of a world otherwise—that we can equip ourselves for the fights ahead.
Deon Haywood, Gloria Steinem and Angeline Echeverria attend the Ms. Foundation For Women’s annual Gloria Awards on May 8, 2019, in New York City. (Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images for Ms. Foundation For Women)
As a Black, queer, woman working in the Deep South, I know the people working overtime to maintain racial and gender hierarchies will not stop at the criminalization of abortion drugs—just like they didn’t stop with the banning of abortion. And they are not limited to the Deep South: Our state is a testing ground for some of white supremacy’s worst policies because our home is Black and brown and queer. It’s us, the folks who have been working to counter these forces for decades, who best understand our opposition. And so, as the news of the criminalization of mifepristone and misoprostol spreads across the country, I ask you, those who profess to be with us in this fight, to embrace reproductive justice. We need you to understand the ways our fights are connected and to keep resourcing the folks on the front lines—the Black, queer, poor and working-class Southerners. When they’re using the same tools they used to wreak havoc on Black and brown communities for decades to criminalize anyone for simply possessing abortion care drugs, we know that our collective struggle transcends abortion rights alone.
https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/23/louisiana-abortion-pills-reproductive-justice/
Barbie's Existential Crisis and the Fight for Reproductive Justice
Barbie’s Existential Crisis and the Fight for Reproductive Justice
1/11/2024 by Tomi-Ann Roberts and Jamie Goldenberg
Women’s bodies present a special problem for death denial—and these concerns motivate patriarchal cultures to seek control of those bodies from women themselves.
Margot Robbie in Barbie. (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Awards season is here, and while it first it seemed like Barbie would rake in quite a few, after securing more Golden Globe nominations than any other film this year, it now looks as though Gerwig’s film may get passed over for final awards and end-of-year “best of” lists, despite its overwhelming box office popularity. Perhaps critics could not allow for a seemingly shallow storyline to carry such a deeply existential, feminist message. Some will call it sacrilege for us to compare Barbie, a film that appears to celebrate artificiality and superficiality, with the deeply noir multiple award-winning film many say is the greatest of all time, Citizen Kane. However, we suggest that both films are owed acclaim for the risks their directors took in broaching the most anxiety-provoking of all human concerns: death. Both Orson Welles and Greta Gerwig deliver their existential message through toys—but where Rosebud the sled restores the dying Kane’s lost promise of masculine youth, Barbie the doll depicts the central thesis of our work as feminist social psychologists: that fear of death that undergirds the control of women and their bodies, and women’s own efforts to conform to societal expectations for their bodily control. Considered this way, Barbie is relevant not only to the impending decisions of the Academy of Motion Pictures, but also to the Supreme Court, as they are once again set to adjudicate women’s right to manage their own reproductive bodies.
In our field of social psychology, terror management theory offers an existential framework for viewing the world, with empirical research to back up its claims. The gist is that, unlike dolls, humans are aware of the inescapable fact that they are going to die. This existential threat is quelled by creating and immersing ourselves in a contrived, artificial world that offers an illusion of immortality. As Barbie’s creator Ruth Handler explains to her in the film, “Ideas live forever. Humans, not so much.” Women’s bodies present a special problem for death denial, with their monthly bleeding, lactation and pregnancies. And what women’s bodies giveth, they can take away. In our research, we find that death concerns are what motivate the patriarchal oppressive contrivances of objectification and self-objectification. Objectifying “strips” women’s bodies of their more natural, mammalian, and hence threatening mortal qualities, emphasizing an idealized, contrived attractiveness. Not only are women treated this way, but they also come to treat themselves this way, investing time and resources in attaining flawless, symbolically immortal beauty.
. . . .
From Barbie’s very first tear that felt “achy, but good,” she begins to recognize that being plastic comes at a price. For her, there’s no getting back in the death-denying box, no matter how nostalgic it smells. So even after working to restore Barbieland to its neoliberal, empowerment feminism utopia, she has to make a choice: Stay perfect, plastic and immortal in Barbieland—or become human. “You understand that humans only have one ending,” Ruth said. Holding hands with her creator, Barbie sees a vision of ordinary girls and women who have not chosen to deny death by investing in the plastic world of self-objectification. Some are young, some old, some are laughing, some crying, some are fat, some thin. All are human, all too human. When Barbie opens her eyes, she chooses Reality. She chooses mortality.
Margot Robbie in Barbie. (Warner Bros. Pictures)
The final scene of the film enlists viewers in wondering what downtown appointment Barbie is rushing to make, and the reveal could not be more illustrative of our existentialist feminist perspective, nor more well timed to the moment in which we find ourselves: holding our breaths not for award nominations, but for the highest Court in the land to hear an appeal regarding medication abortion in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Because real women live in the bodies that can create and sustain life, cultures fear and thus seek to wrest control of those bodies from women themselves. Barbie the doll symbolizes that control in the form of objectified beauty, and instructs girls in self-control through self-objectification. But Barbie, the real woman, starts her mortal human journey at an appointment with the gynecologist—which is, of course, a much more appropriate place than a politician’s office or a courtroom for such a journey to begin.
https://msmagazine.com/2024/01/11/death-barbie-abortion-supreme-court/
What Happens When Sex Dolls Can Talk? (DEFINITELY NSFW)
(Dear Goddess, I had absolutely NO idea about this insanity!!!)
What Happens When Sex Dolls Can Talk? (DEFINITELY NSFW)
5/23/2024 by Julie Wosk
The difference between a real-life adult film star and a simulated one tells us much about the kind of sex dolls many users prefer: ones with tightly controlled conversations.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels poses and signs autographs at Chi Chi Larue’s adult entertainment store on May 23, 2018, in West Hollywood. (Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
Recently, rapt readers could find out about the testimony presented by adult film star Stormy Daniels at Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan. Her language was amusing and startling, and she didn’t mince words: At one point, she acknowledged she had once called him an “orange turd.” Daniels’ language was a far cry from the kind of words uttered by today’s talking sex dolls, like the ones produced by California’s RealDoll, a subsidiary of Abyss Creations. These are sexy, custom-made AI-enabled dolls that are programmed to never say anything mean or insulting. They are designed to flatter the user and always be compliant. They never say, “No, don’t do that,” or “Get lost!” Daniels herself gave RealDoll the license to produce Stormy Daniels sex dolls—but these dolls were silent and couldn’t talk. The difference between a real-life adult film star and a simulated one tells us much about the kind of sex dolls many users apparently prefer: ones that have tightly controlled conversations. And the difference tells us much about users social attitudes towards women themselves.
Finished silicone RealDoll sex dolls at the Abyss Creations factory in San Marcos, Calif. (David McNew / Getty Images)
The Implications of Talking Sex Dolls
Sex dolls—adult-size dolls with silicone skin—have come in many different configurations over the years. The California-based Realdolls gives users a choice of eye color, hair style, skin tones, height, breast and nipple size and labia formation with varying vaginal inserts. The dolls don’t move, but their bodies—arms, legs, torsos—can be manipulated. Initially the dolls couldn’t talk but starting in 2018, RealDoll introduced dolls with robotic heads that could be attached to a RealDoll body with magnets and could talk. The two-way conversations were based on the type of personality the user chose for the doll. There were 16 traits to choose from and the user could pick 10.
. . . . .
There is a long-standing cultural stereotype of the annoying talkative woman—a chatter box, a gossip and nonstop talker that men would like to control. In the 1970s television series All in the Family, Archie Bunker liked to tell his talkative wife Edith, “Stifle yourself!” Matt McMullen has said the “talkative” trait on a RealDoll could be “dialed down to zero.” Unlike real women, the talking sex dolls have no voice of their own. Their conversations are tightly controlled and programmed to never say anything assertive, combative, hostile, complaining, arguing, disagreeing, debating or unpleasing to the user.
Artificial Women: Sex Robots, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females by Julie Wosk, published by Indiana University Press, April 2024.
. . . . .
Are all talking female sex dolls just vapid creations that simply serve as soothing substitutes for real women? Cody Heller’s witty 2020 television series Dummy presented a tart-talking feminist sex doll who comes to life. She wears a T-shirt with Ruth Bader Ginsburg printed on it and impishly wears a sex doll vaginal insert around her neck. Last-year’s award-winning film Poor Things gave us a wonderfully comic counterpoint to the perfectly controlled talking sex doll model. Bella (played by Emma Stone) is a composite being created from dead body parts and a live brain, and quickly develops a mind of her own. Ever resourceful, this totally articulate simulated woman goes to Paris and cheerfully makes money as a sex worker. In the film, she has a voracious sexual appetite and takes on johns while always celebrating her own individuality and independence. The manufacturers of today’s talking robotic sex dolls are a long way from marketing dolls that have a mind of their own and can resist, rebel, challenge or voice their own needs. The manufacturers seem to assume that most users wouldn’t even want that type of conversation with their sex dolls. Stepford Wives-type sex doll models win out every time. Still, given the artificiality of these sex doll conversations, real women probably won’t have to worry about being permanently supplanted by a talking sex doll. At least not yet! (Seriously, I would not be that optimistic!)
. . . . .
https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/23/sex-dolls-stormy-daniels-porn-star/
The Daily B***h*: "I accept the fact that every piece of furniture in my house
is basically a cat bed. I am most fortunate!!!"
*Both a noun, and a verb, depending on usage.
A Moral Justification for Civil Disobedience to Abortion Bans
A Moral Justification for Civil Disobedience to Abortion Bans
5/6/2024 by Carrie N. Baker
Fighting for better laws and challenging bad laws are critical parts of the fight for the freedom and dignity of women and pregnant people—but so is the underground abortion pill movement, which enacts that freedom and dignity directly.
A protester holds an “I object” placard during the demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice. Crowds marched in central London in support of the right to choose and demanded a change in UK abortion laws in response to the recent arrest of a woman who took abortion pills later than the UK limit. (Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
This article was originally published on The Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Over the last several years, in response to abortion bans and restrictions, advocates around the country have developed an alternative supply network for abortion pills outside of the medical system and the law. As a lawyer and law-abiding citizen, I recommend people follow the law. If they don’t like a law, I recommend challenging it, either in the courts or legislatures. But when voter suppression and gerrymandering have skewed the political system in a way that has led to laws that do not represent the majority nor protect vulnerable groups from harm, civil disobedience may be the morally right and just thing to do. In thinking through the issue of when civil disobedience is justified, I turn to Martin Luther King Jr.‘s Letter From Birmingham Jail, written in August of 1963. In the letter, King distinguishes between just laws and unjust laws. Citing St. Augustine, King explains, “An unjust law is no law at all.” In answering the question of how to distinguish just and unjust laws, King appeals to “moral law” and “eternal and natural law,” citing St. Thomas Aquinas. He argues that just laws “uplift human personality” and unjust laws “degrade human personality.” He argues that an unjust law “distorts the soul and damages the personality.” Quoting Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, he argues that an unjust law “substitutes an ‘I -it’ relationship for the ‘I -thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.”
Applying King’s arguments to current day abortion laws, we can ask several questions: Do abortion bans uplift or degrade human personality? Do they “distort the soul and damage the human personality?” Do they give people supporting them “a false sense of superiority” and make people seeking abortion feel “a false sense of inferiority?” Do they “substitute an ‘I -it’ relationship for the ‘I -thou’ relationship, and relegate persons to the status of things?” I would answer an emphatic “yes” to all of these questions. Headlines over the last year and a half since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade gives us ample evidence of how abortion bans harm the dignity, rights and health of women and people who can become pregnant. There have been more than 70 documented cases of women almost dying when they were denied emergency medical care because of abortion bans enacted across the country. The first woman to die because she was not offered a life-saving abortion due to an abortion ban was Yeniifer Alvarez, who died in July of 2022 in Luling, Texas.
Abortion bans have led to denial of medically necessary healthcare, putting people’s lives in danger, and they have led to threats of criminal prosecution. These laws enable healthcare providers, police and the public to bully and control pregnant women and the people who support them. These actions degrade and damage the human personality, and distort the soul, to use King’s words. These laws give some people “a false sense of superiority” and impose stigma on people who have abortions, which gives them “a false sense of inferiority.” I would argue these laws “substitute an ‘I -it’ relationship for the ‘I -thou’ relationship and relegate pregnant women to the status of things,” whose lives are not valued, whose dignity is not respected, and whose rights are disregarded.
. . .
For these reasons and more, I support the robust alternative delivery system providing abortion pills to people in all 50 states, including those banning or restricting abortion (see plancpills.org). I support these systems because I believe that we cannot become habituated to the injustice of abortion bans. Martin Luther King described civil disobedience as a rejection of the habituated acquiescence to the injustice of segregation. Civil disobedience creatively enacted new habits and new relations required for a functioning multiracial democracy. According to King, nonviolent direct action enabled a recovery of agency by the oppressed. By burying the “psychology of servitude,” King said, “we can make ourselves free” not only by fighting for freedom and dignity, but by enacting that freedom and dignity directly. Fighting for better laws and challenging bad laws in the courts are critical parts of the fight for the freedom and dignity of women and pregnant people, but so is the underground abortion pill movement, which enacts that freedom and dignity directly, and resists the “psychology of servitude” and “habitual acquiescence” to unjust laws.
https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/06/civil-disobedience-abortion-bans/
To Defend Democracy, We Must Protect Bodily Autonomy
To Defend Democracy, We Must Protect Bodily Autonomy
5/13/2024 by Julia Reticker-Flynn
Pro-democracy funders must see attacks to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ liberation and racial justice as attacks to U.S. democracy itself—and fund accordingly.
Abortion rights supporters celebrate winning the referendum on Issue 1, a measure to enshrine a right to abortion in Ohio’s Constitution, in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 7, 2023. (Megan Jelinger / AFP via Getty Images)
It is no coincidence that at the same moment U.S. democracy is facing existential threats, we are also witnessing profound assaults not only on the body politic but on our bodily autonomy. Consider the former: a violent insurrection threatening the peaceful transfer of power, disinformation campaigns intended to undermine trust in election results, state lawmakers attempting override the popular will through gerrymandering, new state laws criminalizing dissent, preemption being used to limit the power of local control, and attacks to the integrity of state and federal courts. At the same time, the Supreme Court ignored 50 years of precedent to overturn Roe v. Wade, leading state politicians to ban abortion and local law enforcement to criminalize pregnancy outcomes, as school boards ban books about LGBTQ people and people of color. Trans people’s health and lives are on the line, as state legislatures target gender affirming health care and the very ability to participate in civic life. The sum and substance of these attacks are clear: to consolidate power, particularly the power of white Christian nationalist men. One of the biggest threats to the consolidation of power is an empowered and engaged populace—particularly women, the LGBTQ community and people of color. Which is why anti-democratic leaders are doing all they can to limit and curtail the power of these communities. This moment requires progressive and pro-democracy funders to understand the attacks to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ liberation and racial justice not as distinct or disparate—but as central to the attacks to our democracy itself, and to fund accordingly.
The Authoritarian Playbook
Authoritarian regimes and backsliding democracies across the globe are undermining bodily autonomy as a fundamental strategy to consolidate power. In Brazil, Bolsonaro forged partnerships with conservative evangelists, espousing traditional gender roles and regressive policies, ultimately propelling him to power. Once in power, he has worked actively to undermine the voting rights and the judicial system, while simultaneously working to further restrict abortion access. Putin, like many autocrats, consistently relies on homophobic and misogynistic messaging to sew distrust in the West, and to engender nationalism and support for his power and actions. In Poland, Human Rights Watch notes that the attacks to reproductive freedom are directly linked to the dismantling of the democratic norms including the capture of the judicial branch and crackdowns on the right to protest. A recent report by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law finds that attacks on LGBTQ people and their rights are a precursor to democratic backsliding.
These global trends should be sounding the alarm for everyone who is invested in the future of U.S. democracy. There are clear parallels between Russia’s 2012 law banning discussion of sexuality in schools and the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida. The threats to judicial independence and abortion access in Poland mirror what we are seeing at the state and federal level in the U.S. The moral panic that political leaders are inciting around trans people in the U.S. harkens back to Bolsonaro and Putin’s rhetoric demonizing the LGBTQ community.
. . . .
What are some practical tips for moving out of our own silos?
Joining donor collaboratives that are focused on the intersection of these issues.
Attending funder and field convenings such as the 22nd Century Initiative that are bringing people together across every movement to build a united front.
Funding cross movement work at the state and national level that addresses structural barriers to full participation.
Asking grantees about how they are seeing the threats to reproductive justice and democracy intersect.
Funding reproductive justice and LGBTQ groups to work on democracy issues and partner with democracy organizations (and vice versa).
To stop the U.S. from backsliding into an autocracy, we must recognize attacks on bodily autonomy as part of the larger effort to consolidate power—and out-organize, out-strategize and out-fund our opposition at every turn. We need to build a pro-democratic united front.
https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/13/philanthropy-democracy-attacks-women-lgbtq-race-gender/
Malnutrition: The Hidden Struggle of Afghan Women and Children
Malnutrition: The Hidden Struggle of Afghan Women and Children
Arezu Fayyazi | April 23, 2024
In times of conflict, political instability, and social unrest, women and children have always been the ones who face the most dire consequences compared to the rest of the population. It is nearly three years since the Taliban returned to power and their extremist views and restricting edicts against Afghan women has been one of the major human rights crises. Afghan women’s rights are under constant attack by the Taliban. However, the silent struggle that Afghan women are facing on top of the restrictions on their rights and existence is food insecurity and malnutrition. Women are struggling to feed their children and themselves, leaving them all malnourished.
Currently, 15.5 million people are considered to be facing acute food insecurity, 2.7 million of which are in an emergency situation. In 2023, it is estimated that 1.2 million Afghan women were malnourished. According to the World Food Programme, this number is only expected to grow this year. The statistics for Afghan children are also supposed to grow this year, reaching 3 million malnourished children. Acute malnutrition is at a dire point for women and children as about 50% of children under five years of age and 25% of pregnant and breastfeeding mothers need nutritional support in the coming 12 months in order to survive.
. . .
Afghanistan’s hunger and malnutrition crisis is often forgotten given the other wars around the world where famine and food crises are more visible. However, in addition to food insecurity, Afghanistan is one of the top 10 countries facing maternal and child mortality due to several reasons, including malnutrition. The health of women and children will continue to drastically decline unless sustainable interventions, such as allowing women to work and earn an income, are put in place to support families. The consequences of a malnourished population of women and children are severe. With malnourished children, the next generation of Afghanistan will face life-long health consequences, such as cognitive impairment, and will have far worse quality of life. The economy will suffer as well because of a lack of a qualified and educated workforce. The GDP will continue to face losses and the recovery will take even longer.
Importantly, when an expecting mother is malnourished, it is more likely that their child will be born of a low-birth weight. This opens a large possibility of future health concerns for the child, including increased risk of adult chronic disease, frequent infections, and reduced mental and physical capacity. Targeting malnutrition in Afghanistan and working to improve the nutrition of women and children must become as much of a priority as it has been in other parts of the world where there’s more visibility on food starvation. Targeting malnutrition means improving the health, physical growth, cognitive development, school performance, and productivity of Afghan women and children. By supporting the growth of a strong and prepared population of women and children, there is the potential to improve Afghanistan’s social and economic development in addition to the empowerment of women.
Sources: Ariana News, Khaama Press, Human Rights Watch, World Food Programme, Relief Web, UNSCN, UNICEF
https://feminist.org/news/malnutrition-the-hidden-struggle-of-afghan-women-and-children/
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