Sometimes the most consequential innovations are fueled by frustration. When she was in her early thirties, Ridhi Tariyal asked her gynecologist for a fertility test. Her doctor dismissed the request, saying such a test wasn’t possible. Tariyal knew otherwise. With an MBA from Harvard and a Master of Science in biomedical enterprise from MIT, she was familiar with the Anti-Müllerian Hormone, an established marker of ovarian reserve. The test existed. Still, her doctor would not order it.

The experience left her frustrated enough to turn her own health into a science project. “There are thousands of women like me,” Tariyal, now 45, says. “Women are waiting longer to have children, but they still want information about their reproductive health.”

Regular fertility tests require blood samples, so that raised an obvious question: Where could women collect blood easily and repeatedly without a clinic visit?

The answer, she realized, was hiding in plain sight. Every month, billions of women discard biological material containing blood, immune cells, bacteria and fragments of tissue shed from the uterine lining. According to Taryal, over 800 genes are expressed differently in menstrual effluence and venous blood. Yet, she notes, “We throw all this valuable information into the trash.” What if menstrual blood could reveal fertility, detect disease and provide a window into women’s health, all without invasive procedures?

Women’s health is chronically underfunded, under-researched, and misunderstood – receiving just 2% of private healthcare funds globally. In fact, most clinical trials were not required to include women until a ruling change in 1993. Consequently, the male body has been treated as the default in medical research, despite substantial physical and biological differences between men and women.

Last week’s 62nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was a major historic leap for mothers around the world, in both the developing countries and in advanced economies. Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur for Violence against Women and Girls, its Causes and Consequences presented an astoundingly thorough report titled Violence Against Mothers.

Working under a special UN mandate established in 1994 to investigate the root causes and resulting consequences of gender-based violence, as well as propose systemic reforms, Ms. Alsalem’s report covered the manifold forms of overlooked gender-based violence against mothers. In her public statement accompanying her report she said: “Motherhood remains largely undervalued and mischaracterized as a purely private choice rather than a public good. Mothers are subjected to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, yet remain unrecognized as a distinct category in law, policy and data.”

Julie Shayne has spent the better part of her teaching career navigating campus politics made complicated by being a woman.

Each semester, she once again finds herself on edge at the beginning of the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies course she teaches. While most of her students have been pleasant, she said she has had to remain cautious of red flags.

“My classes meet a diversity requirement, so I get students in there who don’t want to be in there, or at least initially, they think they don’t want to be in there,” said Shayne, who is a teaching professor at the University of Washington Bothell. “So they’re almost resentful that they’re having to spend time learning something that they think is just political or opinion or however they feel.”

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, also known as ARCC, aims to normalize abortion by putting a simple message where drivers can see it – on a billboard at the side of a busy road. Located at the intersection of Wharncliffe and Southdale Road in London, ON, the new 10 X 24 foot billboard proclaims, “Abortion is healthcare.”

Margret Taylor is the social media coordinator for ARCC.

“There’s a coordinated anti-choice presence in terms of advertising,” said Taylor.

Anyone who’s had a graphic anti-choice pamphlet pressed into their hands on a busy urban street knows this is true. Another example of this organized anti-choice campaigning would be the anti-abortion billboards that were once a staple on BC’s Highway 97. This practice only ended when BC Billboards announced in 2025 that it would no longer display billboards about abortion at all – be they anti-choice or pro-choice.

Several years ago, the night before a local election, I was arrested for prostitution outside of a Koreatown motel. The customer who made the appointment with me twirled his wedding ring a lot and made small talk about sex toys. When he stood up, I followed him towards his motel room, which was across a parking lot. Once outside, I was handcuffed and shoved into an unmarked van by the “customer” and another cop, who flashed his shiny gold badge. After a few hours, I was dumped like a stray dog at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. Unlike many other sex workers who have been routinely rounded up in prostitution stings, I was not misgendered, raped or beaten by cops. But the subordination ritual of the arrest itself, and the feeling of being caught in the jaws of a likely publicity stunt before an Election Day, stuck with me.

A majority of the other women in jail with me that night were half my age and were Black or brown. One of them fell asleep with her head on my lap after she showed me how to use the phone. Then, and now, the LAPD brags about making the city safer, but for sex workers, more arrests only mean more fear, abuse, trauma and poverty. Incarceration only exacerbates these conditions. For sex workers, cleaning up the city means erasure.

Arlie Hochschild coined the term in 1983 to describe a specific workplace cost. Starbucks' Green Apron Service is pushing it further than she imagined

After visiting an island brothel in Bangladesh, the novelist was inspired to write an imagined uprising. She explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the power

Respectfully, no thanks

Elfriede

I am beyond the point in my life
Where I am trying to save
An emotionally unavailable
Avoidant man

The story of the misunderstood, sensitive softboi
The story of the emotionally unavailable man
With fear of intimacy
And commitment issues
Who will eventually reveal their lovable golden core
As old as time
So old
My ears bleed from it
It’s a fairy tale
Cause all they ever reveal themselves to be
Is self-absorbed assholes

You say women never gave you a chance
To open up and be yourself
While all that time
you apparently expected them
to commit to your terms

But
two people
means two terms,
and a women’s terms are no less of importance than yours.

Maybe they waited patiently
Went in
Round and round again
For negotiation
And drove against walls
And eventually decided,
they had seen enough
You had shown them your terms
And respectfully,
They declined

If you don’t want to get to know me
If you are not interested in meaningful conversation
If you are looking for a good time,
laughter, kisses and good fucks
Then please
Let’s just call it like that
And let’s have some uncomplicated sex
Without all the other awkwardness

But also
without you reaping all the care work
All so eagerly
Without reciprocating

Yet, if in general
I am just too much
A burden
Demanding
Intense
You’re repulsed by me
Being an actual subject
A person
With a character
With needs, emotions and boundaries

Then
Better buy yourself
A pocket pussy
And talk to chatGPT
I heard its programmed for empathy and not giving strong counters
I have seen and tried and waited and
I, respectfully, decline.

Published in Harbour #4 Fall 2025

For women especially, contempt for feminist pieties, if deftly channeled, could be one’s ticket to stardom. And what had feminism done for them recently, except tell them to work harder and feel bad for wanting to be skinny? Or worse: trick them into waiting too long to have babies? Now, a growing group of right-wing women — both prominent personalities and loyal foot soldiers — are waking up to find their inclusion in the MAGA movement was contingent. Sexism wasn’t merely the price of entry; it was the theme of the party.

OMG why did the leopard ate my face moment right there. Well at least they "get it" now.

It's a nice compilation with information a lot of people probably already know about but that really shows how absurd the idea is.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/39623964

Ahead of International Women's Day, several WeChat public accounts advocating for women's and minority rights were shut down

Ahead of International Women's Day, multiple WeChat public accounts advocating for women's and minority rights were shut down. According to incomplete statistics, the banned accounts include: "Xiaowusheng Psychology," an organization focusing on mental health for sexual minorities; "Dongxia Primavera," which addresses feminist and leftist youth issues; "Letters from Two Strangers," a Gen Z feminist account; "HerStoryNow" run by grassroots feminist groups, "自由娜拉NORA" (Freedom NORA), an independent media outlet focusing on human trafficking and the rights of people with mental disabilities, "Belonging Space," a team dedicated to the mental health of women and sexual minorities, "流放地" (Place of Exile) advocating for sexual minority rights, and "艾大荀," an account operated by female public welfare activists.

Such mass bans seem to occur annually, like some kind of sacrificial ritual. My recollection is that the first instance happened during IDAHOTB in 2021. Back then, on WeChat's interface, banned public accounts would display as "Untitled Public Account（未命名公众号）." In response, some members of the LGBTQ+ community added the prefix "Untitled（未命名）" to their online aliases as a form of protest. Yet now people have even grown accustomed to it.

A video about how internet fandoms hunt women and want to/try to/succeed at kill(ing) them.

A warning for various things: misogyny, S.A. threats, murder, entitlement etc.

@feminism
Manga review: Blame!

STORY: 6

Meet Killy, a mysterious man with a few words in a future where even the concepts of time and space seem to be lost. His mission is to find a human whose genes have not been altered too much. Those genes are the only way for humans to re-establish contact with the net sphere, a space or entity that is cut from the rest of the world, in order to remove the looming threat of annihilation.
Silicon life, Toha Heavy Industries, Safeguards, the plot can be confusing sometimes, so, if you cannot get in its particular flow, the story for you will simply be “a boy with a big gun goes up a LOT of stairs, looking to repair wifi”.

Continue here:
https://mangaispolitical.noblogs.org/post/2025/03/22/review-blame/

#7 #Action #Adventure #Afternoonmagazine #AI #collapse #comics #drama #dystopia #tech #feminism #Gore #growth #gun #Horror #internet #manga #mangareview #Mecha #Mystery #NiheiTsutomu #Post-Apocalyptic #Psychological #review #Sci-Fi #seinen #socialsciences #stairs #Supernatural #Survival #Thriller #Tragedy #wifi #ブラム

The police officer had to break it to her gently. First, he asked Gisèle Pelicot whether she thought she knew her husband Dominique so well that he couldn’t hide anything from her. She said yes.

He also asked whether the couple ever swapped partners. “I heard myself stammering that swinging was inconceivable for me. I couldn’t bear other men touching me. I needed feelings,” she recalls.

Ms Pelicot was completely unprepared for the bombshell coming. Gradually, the officer explained the actions of the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as “a super guy”.

Horrified, she had no idea then of how subsequent events would turn her into a a global icon for campaigns against sexual violence.

Embodying the message that it is the perpetrators, not the victims, who should feel shame, the 72-year-old grandmother waived her anonymity in the trial of her ex-husband and the 50 other men.

“Nearly 50 years of marriage and I could still clearly picture our first meeting. His smile. His shy look. His long curly hair, down to his shoulders. His navy jumper. He was going to love me.”

Ms Pelicot says that when she spoke in court during the trial, she had prepared some notes. “People are thanking me for my courage each day. I want to say to them, ‘it’s not courage but the will and determination to change this patriarchal, macho society’.”

She says that accepting a closed-door trial would have protected her abusers and left her alone with them in court, “hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn”.

“No one would know what they had done to me. Not a single journalist would be there to write their names next to their crimes,” she explains. “Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.”

She says had she been 20 years younger, she might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing. “I would have feared the stares," she writes. "Those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with…”

“Perhaps shame fades all the more easily when you’re 70, and no one pays attention to you any more.”