June 29, 2023

Inquisitive, beloved Canadian sex educator Sue Johanson dies aged 93

Inquisitive, beloved Canadian sex educator Sue Johanson dies aged 93
Johanson was venerated as a forthright educator who filled voids left by the absence of sex ed curricula at US and Canadian schools

Tracey Lindeman in Ottawa
Thu 29 Jun 2023 14.44 EDT
Sex educator Sue Johanson, who once declared that “horny is a beautiful thing,” has died at the age of 93 after more than two decades of giving frank advice to audiences in Canada and the US.

Johanson gained an international audience with her plainspoken guidance to Canadians on her radio and TV programme Sunday Night Sex Show – and then Americans on her Talk Sex programme.

She died in a long-term care home in Thornhill, Ontario.

Lisa Rideout, the director of a 2022 documentary on Johanson titled Sex With Sue, confirmed her death on Thursday. Paying tribute in a post on Instagram, Rideout called Johanson “an incredible, unstoppable force” who “paved the way for how we talk about sex and sexuality today”.

Johanson’s curly grey hair, wire-rimmed glasses and pragmatic wardrobe were a jarring contrast to her blunt, sometimes playful and often explicit takes on sexuality.

“She was a giant, and had such a positive impact on the lives of so many people,” wrote prominent sex advice columnist Dan Savage on Twitter.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/sue-johanson-dead-93-canadian-sex-educator

I first became aware of her in the early 2000s. She was wonderful! RIP Sue.

June 29, 2023

Ruminations on another trip around the sun

Today I celebrate my 80th trip around the sun and I'm looking around wondering, how the heck am I this old? Aside from a few creaks and crunches, I don't feel it, and I'm told I certainly don't look it. I pass for someone in her 60s all the time, but when I count out my pills in the morning I wince. I think of the things I still want to do and wonder if I will get to do any of them, let alone all. I think about things I have done and wish I'd done a lot of them differently, but I'm proud of some of them, anyway.

I've seen a bunch of history, from WWII (which I don't remember, although I sort of vaguely remember my dad coming home (I was 2 1/2) through Korea and Vietnam to now. From segregation (although I never really went to segregated schools) through the Civil Rights era to things trying to go backwards the way they are now---damn you MAGAts and fascists, you are beyond stupid! I don't know if I've gotten any wiser or not, but I certainly have the benefit of history to look through at today's events, and some of them make me very uneasy. Others don't, because I feel like I've seen this before and have an inkling of how it might turn out.

It's been an interesting life thus far. I don't know how much of it I have left; I'm in good health so far (knock wood) but I know I could be one catastrophic illness away from the end. My intention is to go on enjoying every day, keep on doing what I do--love my husband and my family and my world, make jewelry, take care of my stray cats, and be a good Democrat. Everybody have a great day and keep on smiling!

June 28, 2023

'We are literally erased': what does it mean to be intersex?

A balloon pops with pink confetti. A mini rocket shoots blue dust. A gun shoots a box which contains pink explosives. Every Body, a new documentary following three intersex Americans, opens with snippets of a bizarre, if familiar, ritual: gender reveals, in which people surprise friends and family with a shower of pink or blue. The videos all includes screams of joy – a series of people conflating the celebration of new life with a confirmation of the gender binary.

As Every Body powerfully contends, such an emphasis is not only irrelevant to young children, but inaccurate to the vast spectrum of human bodies. It is possible, explains the intersex expert Dr Katharine Dalke, to be a biological female with testes, and a biological male with a uterus, among many other variations between the two sexes. About 1.7% of humans are intersex, an umbrella term for any variation within a person’s sex traits, including genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy or chromosomes. (For comparison, that’s about the same percentage of people born with red hair.) Some traits are present at birth, while others develop naturally over time, and 0.07% of people – or about 230,000 Americans – possess traits so significant they may be referred for surgery.

Not that most Americans are aware of such differences, owing to misinformation about intersex people, a near-desert of representation and widespread pressure on intersex people to keep quiet. “I’d say, by and large, 80-90% of people probably could not comfortably tell you what it means to be intersex,” said River Gallo (they/them), an intersex activist who appears in the film. “More people are using the LGBTQIA acronym, but still – if you were to ask people what the ‘I’ stands for, it would be ‘what does that mean?’”

Every Body, directed by Julie Cohen (the Oscar-winning co-director of the 2018 documentary RBG) follows three intersex awareness advocates and activists: Alicia Roth Weigel (she/they), a political consultant and writer who lives in Austin, Texas; Sean Saifa Wall (he/him), a Bronx-raised doctoral student living in Manchester, England; and Gallo, a New Jersey-bred actor and film-maker now based in Los Angeles. All three were subjected to non-consensual, medically unnecessary surgeries in their youth – long the standard medical treatment for intersex people, under the assumption that life within an artificial sex binary would be preferable. (The United Nations condemned such irreversible procedures, conducted to “normalize” genitalia under the guise of preventing the shame of living in an “abnormal” body, in 2013.)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/28/intersex-documentary-every-body-what-does-it-mean

I was going to post this in Gender and Orientation, but it only includes LBGT. Perhaps that needs to be changed to be more inclusive.

June 28, 2023

Russian general who may have known about Wagner mutiny goes missing

A Russian general who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine has not been seen in public since Saturday, with US intelligence reportedly claiming he had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Gen Sergei Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine. Prigozhin had welcomed his appointment to that post in 2022, calling him a “legendary figure” and “born to serve his motherland”.

The well-publicised links between Surovikin and Prigozhin have fuelled rumours that Surovikin may be purged or put under investigation for supporting the mutiny. When Prigozhin launched his uprising, Surovikin made an unambiguous statement against it and in support of the Russian government late on Friday.

“We fought together with you, took risks, we won together,” Surovikin said. “We are of the same blood, we are warriors. I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to escalate in our country.”

However, the New York Times, citing western intelligence sources, reported on Wednesday that Surovikin had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s armed mutiny, in which his Wagner mercenaries captured the city of Rostov and moved on Moscow before cutting an amnesty deal.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/russian-general-wagner-mutiny-goes-missing

Tea or windows?

June 28, 2023

In Texas, a rare program offers hope for some of the most vulnerable women and babies

The pregnancy was a turning point for L. She was in an abusive relationship. "He actually hit me when I was pregnant," she says. "I was like, 'Well, if that's not gonna stop him, then nothing is.'"

NPR is not using her full name — just her initial — out of concern for L's safety.

She considered abortion, but even if she'd wanted one, it was impossible. Abortion is illegal in Texas, and she didn't have the means to go to another state. The closest clinic is at least an eight-hour drive from her home in San Antonio. L also had another child, a 4-year-old boy, and couldn't leave him.

The only thing she had the power to do was to quit her relationship. She just needed a place to go to.

There was another complication, though. L is in recovery. She has struggled with substance use disorder in the past and was taking methadone — a drug that helps mitigate the side effects of opioid addiction — when she got pregnant. She needed to find a place to go to that would be supportive and understanding.

That's when she found Casa Mía, a program in San Antonio that provides housing and support for pregnant women and new mothers struggling with addiction.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/28/1184470838/abortion-texas-addiction-pregnancy-substance-abuse-casa-mia

More programs like this, please. Most places punish pregnant women and new moms with histories of addiction.

June 27, 2023

More than 100 U.S. political leaders have slaveholding ancestors, genealogy research finds

As U.S. lawmakers commemorated the end of slavery by celebrating Juneteenth this month, many of them could have looked no further than their own family histories to find a more personal connection to what’s often called America’s “original sin.”

In researching the genealogies of America’s political elite, a Reuters examination found that a fifth of members of Congress, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people.

Among 536 members of the last sitting Congress, for example, Reuters determined at least 100 descend from slaveholders. Of that group, more than a quarter of the Senate — 28 members — can trace their families to at least one slaveholder.

Among those lawmakers from the 117th Congress are Democrats and Republicans alike. They include some of the most influential politicians in America: Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth and Jeanne Shaheen.

In addition, Reuters determined that President Joe Biden and every living former U.S. president — except Donald Trump — are direct descendants of slaveholders: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and — through his white mother’s side — Barack Obama. Two of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices — Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch — also have direct ancestors who enslaved people.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slaverys-descendants-americas-family-secret-rcna90826

Can we just stop making such a BFD out of what people's ancestors did? Almost all of us, if our ancestors have been here long enough, probably have slaveholders or other equally nasty skeletons in the family closet. What's important is what we're doing NOW.

June 27, 2023

'We could lose our status as a state': what happens to a people when their land disappears

Small island nations would rather fight than flee, but rising sea levels have prompted apocalyptic legal discussions about whether a state is still a state if its land disappears below the waves.

The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents many of the most vulnerable countries, has invited international legal experts to consider this question and begun a diplomatic campaign to ensure that political statehood continues even after a nation’s physical fabric is submerged.

At the heart of this discussion is the scientific certainty that oceans will continue to rise for at least another century and a sense of injustice that those worst affected are among the least responsible for the climate crisis. The Alliance of Small Island States represents more than a quarter of the world’s countries, but is responsible for less than 1% of global carbon emissions, most of which come from big industrialised countries in the global north.

This has locked in an expansion of the world’s oceans that is already under way and will accelerate in the second half of this century. Island maps are already being slowly redrawn and coastlines are increasingly threatened by storm surges. Within decades, archipelagos could lose outlying atolls that define national borders. A century from now – if not sooner – entire states could become uninhabitable, raising doubts about what will happen to their citizens, governments and resources.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/27/we-could-lose-our-status-as-a-state-what-happens-to-a-people-when-their-land-disappears

June 27, 2023

A man is fatally shot in a New Mexico movie theater over a seat dispute

An argument over seating at an Albuquerque movie theater escalated into a shooting that left a man dead and sent frightened filmgoers scrambling to flee, police said Monday.

Detectives with the Albuquerque Police Department filed charges Monday in Metropolitan Court against 19-year-old Enrique Padilla in connection with the Sunday evening shooting at a cinema complex next to an interstate highway.

Padilla was at a hospital under guard Monday evening while being treated for a gunshot wound, police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said. It was unclear whether Padilla had a legal representative who could speak on his behalf.

Witnesses told police that a man later identified as Padilla arrived at the theater with his girlfriend and found another couple in at least one of their reserved seats.

Theater staff attempted to help resolve the dispute, but it escalated with a hurled bucket of popcorn, shoving and then gunfire, according to police.

Michael Tenorio, 52, was shot and died at the scene. His wife, Trina Tenorio, said he was unarmed.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184455537/a-man-is-fatally-shot-in-a-new-mexico-movie-theater-over-a-seat-dispute

Movie seats? Really? Can it get any stupider?

June 26, 2023

Webb telescope shows fantastic powers by zooming into alien planet

The rocky worlds of the TRAPPIST solar system have captivated scientists.

Until recently, these Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, have remained largely mysterious. But researchers suspect some could host water, and maybe even conditions suitable for extraterrestrial life. With the power of the James Webb Space Telescope — the most advanced space observatory ever built — astronomers can analyze these worlds in unprecedented detail. So far, Webb has viewed the two closest planets to their star, TRAPPIST-1.

Scientists recently trained the Webb telescope on TRAPPIST-1 c, the second of the seven-known TRAPPIST planets, and one that orbits just some 1.5 million miles from its small "red dwarf" (also called an "M dwarf&quot star. They published(opens in a new tab) the research in the science journal Nature. Astronomers found this hot planet likely doesn't harbor a thick atmosphere (perhaps similar to Venus), as astronomers once speculated, and instead has little to no water and isn't a great candidate for habitability. There are more TRAPPIST planets, however, for Webb to deeply observe.

"TRAPPIST-1 c is interesting because it’s basically a Venus twin: It’s about the same size as Venus and receives a similar amount of radiation from its host star as Venus gets from the sun," Laura Kreidberg, an exoplanet researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and a study coauthor, said in a statement(opens in a new tab). "We thought it could have a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere like Venus."

(The planet is hot, at some 225 degrees Fahrenheit on its dayside, but not nearly as warm as scorching Venus, which is as hot as a pizza oven.)

https://mashable.com/article/james-webb-space-telescope-trappist-planet

My inner 10 year old wannabe astronomer is agog.......

June 26, 2023

The Hell of Providing Health Care in a Post-Dobbs America

In her 32 years as an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist, Mary Norine Walsh has seen very sick patients and many deaths. “We’re not like orthopedists who only see one in their entire career,” says Walsh, a physician at a Catholic hospital system in Indianapolis and the former president of the American College of Cardiology. Among those very sick patients are pregnant people. Over the decades, Walsh made caring for these types of patients her specialty. She became known for it, and began to receive referrals from other providers for whom pregnancy was too challenging a complication.

Walsh describes pregnancy as “nature’s stress test.” A person’s blood volume more than doubles, which can worsen preexisting conditions and expose countless new ones, such as heart disease. For instance: If a woman develops peripartum cardiomyopathy, a rare type of heart failure, she is in danger of her heart muscle weakening—a condition that could threaten her life, even in future pregnancies. Though cardiovascular issues affect only a small percentage of pregnancies, they are responsible for more than half of postpartum maternal deaths in the United States, making them the leading cause of death among pregnant people.

So when Walsh meets with sick women who are of reproductive age, she brings up contraception. If a patient is already pregnant, Walsh raises the idea of abortion. “The usual recommendation that we have with a very high-risk cardiac condition is a termination,” she says. Without one, says Walsh, her patients could die. Since Walsh doesn’t perform abortions herself, she refers women to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist to receive further care and discuss options, including termination. Walsh has spent years developing her expertise to save women’s lives—a specialty of extraordinary value given that most cardiology studies have been done on men. In some cases, her patients successfully go on to deliver babies, navigating complicated heart conditions with her help. In others, they come back to her pregnancy free, having avoided a possibly lethal health crisis.

But after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling nullified the nearly 50-year-old Constitutional right to an abortion and handed the responsibility for its regulation back to the states, what was often a black and white decision to protect the life of the mother is now a grueling calculus of legal risk for doctors like Walsh.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/abortion-dobbs-health-care-doctors/

Very much worth reading all the way through.