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Feminism has slain our protectors

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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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Author Topic: Feminism has slain our protectors  (Read 13321 times)
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« Reply #30 on: February 15, 2015, 05:30:03 pm »

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« Reply #31 on: February 18, 2015, 06:46:14 am »

Feminist Aborts Male Child Because She ‘Couldn’t Bring Another Monster Into The World’

A feminist blogger has created a massive uproar by detailing her decision to kill her male child in an article entitled “I Aborted My Baby – Because it was a Boy“.  She initially believed that she was going to have a girl, and she was making all sorts of plans for her future.  But when an ultrasound showed that it was going to be a boy, she decided that she must have an abortion because she “couldn’t bring another monster into the world”.  And she says that she would do it again “if the curse returns”.  So what would cause a woman to want to kill her own child just because it is a boy?  How twisted has feminism in America become if this is the result?

You can read her entire article right here.  A lot of people that have read it have become extremely angry, but personally it makes me very sad.  We will never know what that young boy could have become.  We will never know what gifts he could have shared with the world.  He will never love and be loved.  And it is all because of a very selfish and cruel decision by his mother.

So is this what the “right to choose” is all about?  When this young mother initially believed that she was going to have a girl, she was filled with joy…

    “As spring turned into summer and my belly started to grow, my mind ran wild with the thoughts of teaching my daughter from a young age tolerance and feminist ideals. Choosing the right all-girls daycare, then elementary school, all so that she could grow up and thrive in an environment where women are told that they can do anything that they want to do. No man will be around to hurt her progress, no boys there to demean her or call her names.”

But then one day she went in for an ultrasound, and her joy turned into utter despair…

    “I was in shock, I started crying, weeping at the thought of what I was about to curse the world with.”

To many people, this kind of radical feminism seems extremely bizarre.  But the truth is that this is what they are teaching our young women at colleges and universities all over the nation.  For much more on the state of our institutions of higher learning, please see my article from the other day.

Getting back to the story, it only took a couple of days for this young mother to decide to have an abortion…

    “By the third day, I started regaining some of my mental strength and knew what I had to do. I couldn’t bring another monster into the world. We already have enough enemies as it is.”

And after she had her son killed, she felt really great about it.  In fact, she feels like she did “something that would actually make a difference” in the world…

    “A few days later, I went in for the procedure, as it was fairly later in my pregnancy, I was aware there were certain risks, but it went off without a hitch. My body’s betrayal was no more, I was free, and for the first time since the airplane incident, I felt strong. I had done something positive, something that would actually make a difference, something good, even though as I would find out, many others wouldn’t see it that way.”

So does she have any regrets after all this time?

Not at all…

    “If the curse returns, I would do the exact same thing all over again.”

Needless to say, there was a huge backlash against her article.  People were absolutely outraged that any mother would choose to do such a thing…

    Later, Lana said she was shocked at the public’s response to her blog posting, claiming she had even received death threats.“I cannot believe some of the emails that have been forwarded to me,” she wrote in a follow-up post. “[D]o people really exist who want to see me dead because of what I chose to do with my own body? Those are the minds of mentally disturbed individuals … I suspect that many of you reading this will be the kind of people who are sending emails from their mom’s basement, leaving comments on here and on social media websites as you degrade mentally more and more while sitting on your crusty computer chairs. Do everyone a favor: GROW UP!”

In reality, this abortion is not really any different from the tens of millions of other abortions that have been performed in America since Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973.

Everyone that gets an abortion has a “reason” for getting one done.  This mother’s reason may seem a bit more outrageous than others, but the end result of any abortion is always a murdered baby.

So how does a women get to the point where she gleefully has her baby put to death just because it is a male?

Well, the truth is that the cultural forces shaping this woman’s decisions go back a long, long way.  The following is an excerpt from a recent Infowars article…

    This diabolical “us vs. them” mentality pushed by today’s so-called feminists highlights how feminism has transformed from a genuine women’s rights movement in the late 19th century into a top-down tool of social control steered by the CIA and other powerful interests to make women more dependent on the government while breaking up the traditional family model.

    Simply put, people generally hold more allegiance to their own families than they do the state, so what better way to destroy families than to corrupt feminism into an “us vs. them” movement pitting women against men?

    A leading icon of the feminist movement, Gloria Steinem, even admitted she received funding from the CIA and the Rockefeller foundation to influence the counter-culture movement in the 1960s.

The minds of our young people are literally being poisoned, and it is going to get even worse the farther we plunge down the cultural toilet.

We have been taught that it is normal to kill our own babies, and since 1973 more than 50 million Americans have been killed this way.

What should be done to a nation that does such a thing?

What kind of judgment do we deserve?

For many, abortion is an “old issue”.  But there is nothing that could ever lessen the importance of this ongoing holocaust.  The following numbers are from my previous article entitled “19 Facts About Abortion In America That Should Make You Very Sick“…

#1 There have been more than 53 million abortions performed in the United States since Roe v. Wade was decided back in 1973.

#2 When you total up all forms of abortion, including those caused by the abortion drug RU 486, the grand total comes to more than a million abortions performed in the United States every single year.

#3 The number of American babies killed by abortion each year is roughly equal to the number of U.S. military deaths that have occurred in all of the wars that the United States has ever been involved in combined.

#4 Approximately 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.  Every single day, more than 3,000 American babies are killed by abortion.

#5 It has been reported that a staggering 41 percent of all New York City pregnancies end in abortion.

#6 According to Pastor Clenard Childress, approximately 52 percent of all African-American pregnancies now end in abortion.

#7 One very shocking study found that 86 percent of all abortions are done for the sake of convenience.

#8 According to the Guttmacher Institute, the average cost of a first trimester abortion at the ten week mark is $451.

#9 The average cost of a vaginal birth with no complications in the United States is now over $9,000.

#10 A Department of Homeland Security report that was released in January 2012 says that if you are “anti-abortion”, you are a potential terrorist.  Unfortunately, there have also been other government reports that have also identified “anti-abortion” protesters as potential threats.

You can read the rest of that article right here.

So yes, we should be horrified that a young mother has decided to abort her baby because it was male.

But every single abortion is a great tragedy.

Let us never forget that.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/feminist-aborts-male-child-because-she-couldnt-bring-another-monster-into-the-world
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« Reply #32 on: February 22, 2015, 09:30:05 pm »

http://nypost.com/2015/02/22/why-are-girls-flocking-to-isis/
2/22/15
Why are girls flocking to ISIS?

An alarming number of young Western women are defying their families — and all logic — to join the ISIS barbarians.

As many as 550 of the estimated 3,000 Westerners who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic terrorists are female, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London think tank.

It’s the sick siren song of the caliphate that appears to have taken hold of three British schoolgirls, who lied to their East London families last week and casually slipped out of the country on a flight bound for Turkey, believed to be a stopover for those heading to Syria, and ISIS.

The terrified families of Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and another 15-year-old friend, students at Bethnal Green Academy who are all believed to be Muslims, made an impassioned plea to their wayward daughters on Saturday.

“Mum needs you home,” begged Begum’s older sister, Aklima. “You belong at home with us. Syria is a dangerous place and we don’t want you to go there . . . We understand that you have strong feelings and want to help those you believe are suffering in Syria. You can help from home . . . Please don’t cross the border.”

But why would “straight-A” students from London seek out ISIS, whose brutal MO includes savage beheading and burning their captives alive?

Some are coerced — but not all, says law professor Jayne Huckerby, head of Duke University’s International Human Rights Clinic.

“Why do they go? In many cases it’s the same reason as men,” Huckerby told The Post.

Some are alienated by harassment or discrimination against Muslims at home, and want to join what they see as a pro-Muslim movement. Some, according to the ISD, enjoy the shocking violence.


The ISD study, which examined the social-media postings of Western women who joined ISIS, found the women “celebrate the violence of ISIS, unequivocally.”

One woman called the beheading video of US Army vet and aid worker Peter Kassig “gut-wrenchingly awesome,” while others called the beheadings “beautiful.”

The women get a sanitized view of life under ISIS via social media, and can be sparked by what Huckerby calls “a sense of adventure.”

“We’re talking constantly about ISIS being brutal, but they’re getting a different story,” she said.

Women are key to ISIS’s effort to build its own state, she says, whether it’s through fund-raising, having children, doing certain kinds of work at checkpoints, or simply recruiting more women.

And for some women, there are benefits to joining ISIS. Many are given free housing and food. Few seem bothered by the lack of freedom afforded to women under ISIS rule.

Others find “a sense of camaraderie and sisterhood . . . in ISIS-controlled territory, in contrast to the fake and surface-level relationships they have in the West,” according to the study.

But for women who find that life under ISIS isn’t what they expected, there’s little hope to undo their mistake, Huckerby said.

“There are women who are going there and finding the reality is not what they were sold on social media by ISIS, and they want to come back, but government policies at the moment are not encouraging return,” she said.
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« Reply #33 on: February 22, 2015, 10:46:05 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/patricia-arquette-oscar-speech-111824392737.html
Patricia Arquette Calls For Wage Equality in Moving Oscar Speech
2/22/15

Looks like Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane has two reasons to be proud of his onscreen mother, Patricia Arquette. For starters, the 46-year-old won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her moving 12-years-in-the-making performance as a single mother trying to do right by her two kids. But the actress also earned some of the loudest applause of the night when she used her moment in the spotlight to call attention to a crucial issue: Equal pay and equal rights for women. You can watch her speech in the clip above.

Reading from prepared statements that kicked off with messages of thanks to both her Boyhood family and her real family, Arquette built to a rousing crescendo in her speech’s closing moments. “To every woman that gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights,” she said. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Those words got everyone in the crowd fired up — especially in a year where the lack of female nominees in major categories like Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay has been much commented upon — and no one more so than Meryl Streep, who proved that she deserves the statue for Best Fist Pump at the Oscar after-party.
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« Reply #34 on: February 25, 2015, 04:36:53 pm »

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/25/republican_women_are_more_religious_and_theocratic_than_republican_men_new.html
2/25/15
Why Do Women Vote Republican?

A new poll from Public Policy Polling is making headlines this week because it reveals that 57 percent of Republican primary voters want to make Christianity the national religion, even though doing so would require removing the First Amendment from the Constitution. Even more interestingly, the data shows a stark gender divide among Republicans polled on this question: 66 percent of Republican women versus 49 percent of Republican men would like to see America become more theocratic.

Overall, the data suggests that there may be an intriguing gender divide when it comes to the motivations of Republican voters, with results showing men to be more motivated by economic reasons and women drawn to conservative politics for more religious and social reasons. Other interesting gender gaps: Men are nearly twice as likely as women to identify themselves as “Tea Party”; 73 percent of Republican men refuse to accept that climate change is real, compared with 57 percent of Republican women; and Republican men are actually more likely than Republican women to accept evolutionary theory, with 43 percent of men versus 30 percent of women expressing a belief in evolution. Since climate change denialism is more tied up in anti-environmentalist sentiment and evolution denialism is primarily about religion, this divide makes perfect sense.

The gender divide persists when the poll looks at which potential primary candidates male and female Republicans support. Politicians who are seen as more libertarian or more supportive of corporate interests (Rand Paul, Scott Walker) get more love from men, whereas candidates that are more on the Bible-thumping side of the equation (Mike Huckabee) are more popular with women. Of all potential candidates, Huckabee had the highest favorability rating among women.

There's been an increased interest in recent years in what motivates Republican women, particularly as the party has amped up its assault on reproductive rights. This data, which jibes with countless studies have shown that women are more likely to be religious than men, helps answer that question: It's religion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And if you walk into any typical Babel building nowdays - the majority of the pews in it are WOMEN, why? B/c either they are divorced, their husbands aren't interested, or their husbands are too busy to provide for their families the "American Dream"!

1Timothy 2:11  Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
1Ti 2:12  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
1Ti 2:13  For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
1Ti 2:14  And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
1Ti 2:15  Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Titus 2:3  The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
Tit 2:4  That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
Tit 2:5  To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
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« Reply #35 on: March 05, 2015, 09:12:50 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/-women-on-20s--wants-female-hero-to-replace-andrew-jackson-on-currency-171758747.html
3/4/15
‘Women On 20s’ wants female hero to replace Andrew Jackson on currency

Change starts with our bills.

A feminist group wants to remove the image of Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace it with a picture of one of the many illustrious women from American history.

U.S. banknotes have not changed much since the Great Depression. They feature white men — predominantly but not exclusively presidents — who played a pivotal role in the founding or shaping of our nation.

The nonprofit Women On 20s thinks the centennial of women’s suffrage, 2020, would be the perfect opportunity to add women, such as civil rights activist Rosa Parks or former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to the pantheon of American heroes on our currency.

“Many women contribute to our society, philosophy and culture,” group founder Barbara Ortiz Howard said in an interview with Yahoo News. “It’s an opportunity to have a very rich history lesson for everyone.”

Plenty of women, the group argues, deserve to be immortalized on our money more than our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, whose Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in the deaths of thousands of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears.

Furthermore, Jackson opposed central banking and paper currency in general, preferring to stick with gold and silver, which makes his spot on the $20 bill somewhat ironic.

Howard started by asking friends informally who would qualify as a good replacement – and the list grew quickly.

Last month, Women On 20s introduced 15 female candidates to replace the 19th-century statesman: Alice Paul, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Sojourner Truth, Rachel Carson, Rosa Parks, Barbara Jordan, Margaret Sanger, Patsy Mink, Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Frances Perkins, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Voting began on March 1 to coincide with Women’s History Month.

After garnering at least 100,000 votes, the nonprofit intends to introduce its proposal to the White House in hopes that President Obama will take executive action.

“I think that change is difficult to come by,” Howard said. “The present occupants on our currency have been there since 1928 and 1929, when money was standardized. Periodically, the currency is updated for security reasons, but there have been no changes since that time.”

Only two women have been celebrated on U.S. currency to date.

Women's suffrage campaigner Susan B. Anthony was featured on a dollar coin that was “wildly unpopular” when it was first minted and is no longer in production.

Sacagawea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark on their expedition westward, is featured on a gold dollar coin that has been minted every year since 2000.

An 1862 Act of Congress gives the Secretary of the Treasury responsibility for the selection of the people whose images appear on U.S. banknotes.

"That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and is hereby authorized, in case he shall think it expedient to procure said notes, or any part thereof, to be engraved, printed, and executed, in such form as he shall prescribe," the act reads in part.

In 1929, the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a special committee to determine the design of new, smaller banknotes.

The group determined that portraits of renowned U.S. presidents would be most appropriate because of their "more permanent familiarity in the minds of the public than any others."

However, this decision was loosened a bit to include three well-known statesmen: first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Civil War-era Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin.

The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing did not return Yahoo News' request for comment.
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« Reply #36 on: March 06, 2015, 08:30:26 pm »

http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-election-nears-women-march-to-put-peace-on-agenda/
As election nears, women march to put peace on agenda
Some 3,000 women from across Israel take protest to the Knesset, calling on leaders to make negotiations a priority in the next government

3/5/15

Braving a persistent Jerusalem drizzle, some 3,000 women from across Israel circled the Knesset on Wednesday to demand that peace take center stage in the next government ahead of elections on March 17.

Rallied by Women Wage Peace, a grassroots organization created last August, the women — wearing turquoise ribbons and carrying signs reading “choosing a diplomatic agreement”  — chanted “It’s reality, not a dream, women make peace.” They joined hands as they sang “A Song For Peace,” the tune that slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin hummed on stage at a peace rally in Tel Aviv moments before his assassination in November 1995.

Yael Elad, head of the group’s media team, said Women Wage Peace was formed in the wake of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza by two prominent lawyers, Irit Tamir and Michal Barak, who felt that “women cannot just sit at home, complain, and hope for the best, without actively doing something to change the situation.”

“It’s time for us to be part of the dialogue that revolves around security and peace,” Elad told The Times of Israel. “We sense that women disappear from the public space when you look at TV panels or listen to radio shows. This place is reserved for generals or politicians, but never for women. This has to change. Women are half of the population; we raise the kids who eventually get sent to fight wars or protect the country. We should be there to say something about the outcome.”

Since the summer, the group has proliferated through parlor meetings and social media. Though only recognized officially as a nonprofit on the day of the rally and still with no bank account, Women Wage Peace now boasts 7,000 registered members and over 10,000 supporters on Facebook.

Elad hopes that number will eventually mushroom to 700,000.

“We must become a powerful electoral voice,” Elad, the chief financial officer of a Tel Aviv venture capital firm, said, emphasizing that the group has no intention of evolving into a political party. We disagree on many things but agree on the necessity of a peace agreement for the future of Israel.”

Rihab Abdul Halim, an education entrepreneur and lecturer from the Arab village of Manshiyat Zabda in the Jezreel Valley, said she joined the movement’s steering committee out of deep conviction in the power of women to foster reconciliation.

“Like Mother Teresa said, peace starts at home,” Abdul Halim told The Times of Israel. “As women, our role is to educate for tolerance and the acceptance of the other. Why do we want peace? Because we hurt most during war.”

Recruiting Arab women for a peace movement is more difficult than recruiting Jewish women, Abdul Halim admitted sadly.

“I understand them. We, Arab women, don’t see ourselves as decision-makers. We feel we have no influence. Influence rests with the government, which is Jewish. Nevertheless, when I hold parlor meetings, I see the women change their minds.”

Abdul Halim was particularly moved by the connections forged between Arab and Jewish volunteers since the organization was created.

“I describe this connection like a woman standing on the side of a lake and throwing in a pebble, representing our vision. The stone creates water circles that grow wider and wider. Similarly, this movement created circles of humanity between women. We exchange knowledge and culture, empowering each other. The influence is not just in the domain of peace, but in society more broadly.”

Tova Levy-Furman, a retired diplomat, said Women Wage Peace was reminiscent of her activity in Four Mothers, a women’s group formed in 1997 to demand an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, a move eventually carried out by prime minister Ehud Barak in May 2000.

‘The outlook of women is conciliatory; it’s constructive rather than destructive,’ said Ambassador Tova Levy-Furman

“It was a pleasure working with Four Mothers, who all had children in elite combat unites,” the former Israeli ambassador to Cameroon recalled. “The speed in which they learned to work with the media was astounding. They finally managed to get Israel out of Lebanon against the opinion of the army.”

Levy-Furman said she believed women should “take responsibility for their lives and stop being victims all the time.”

“The outlook of women is conciliatory; it’s constructive rather than destructive,” she added. “Men have a rigid, one-sided vision. They don’t see the way out.”


Elad, the group’s spokeswoman, admitted that the two most prominent women in Israeli politics, former prime minister Golda Meir and the Zionist Union’s co-chair Tzipi Livni, may not be the most glowing examples of peace-oriented leaders. The former disregarded peace overtures from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the early 1970s, unable to avert the devastating Yom Kippur War of 1973, while the latter — a chief negotiator under prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu — clearly occupies the right flank of her adoptive movement.

“They were two women operating in a heavily male-dominated environment. They weren’t surrounded by thousands of women and didn’t have the unique support of thousands of women. I don’t think they necessarily had the chance to express their feminine voice,” she said. “We rally together in order to create the power of many. It’s not very easy to be heard as women here.”

Aware that elections are just around the corner, Abdul Halim nevertheless said she never tells women who to vote for.

“I don’t like politics. It only gets in the way,” she said. “All I will say is ‘vote for those who want peace.'”


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« Reply #37 on: March 13, 2015, 02:14:34 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/a-female-border-patrol-agent-explains-why-the-agency-needs-more-women-222753189.html
A female Border Patrol agent explains why the agency needs more women
3/13/15

When Border Patrol Agent Nicole Ballistrea encounters female migrants traveling from Mexico into southern Arizona with a group of men, she asks the women if they’d prefer to be searched privately, away from the group.

“If I was a female migrant, I’d want privacy,” said Ballistrea who, after almost six years on the job, was plucked from the field for a temporary gig in the press office at the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.

Although Ballistrea’s method is ideal, it’s not always feasible. There aren’t nearly enough female agents to offer that kind of privacy to every female migrant apprehended along the southwest border. In fact, while the number of women caught entering the U.S. illegally through Mexico has increased 173 percent since 2011 — reaching 121,000 last year alone — the number of female agents within the U.S. Border Patrol has hovered around 5 percent.

But that’s about to change. Or, at least, the agency hopes it will.

Late last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection received federal approval to embark on its first-ever exclusively female hiring spree, and the agency went to work developing an ad campaign geared toward women recruits.


That specific push lasted only the first two weeks of December 2014, but the mission to increase the female presence among the Border Patrol’s ranks is ongoing, with CBP continuing to use those tailor-made recruitment tactics even after reopening hiring to applicants of both genders.

“We’ve done several studies with our applicant pool, our pipeline and current female agents and found that, typically, the women that are interested in the Border Patrol agent position have a liking for the outdoors, are sports-oriented, into health and fitness, often interested in firearms,” Joe Battaglia, who runs the national recruitment effort for the CBP’s office of human resources, told Yahoo News.

Those are exactly the kinds of women Border Patrol is trying to find, marketing to organizations such as the National College Athletic Association, the American Council on Exercise, the Women’s Sports Foundation and USA Triathlon, in addition to veterans organizations that have proved to be fertile recruiting ground for aspiring Border Patrol agents of either gender.

It was at a job fair in Buffalo, N.Y., where Ballistrea first envisioned herself patrolling the cities, mountains and vast desert of the southwest border. As she listened to a recruiter’s pitch, she realized a career with the Border Patrol could be the perfect opportunity to combine the Spanish she studied in college with her interest in immigration law, while also working outside. Plus, she wanted a challenge.

And joining the Border Patrol is a challenge, particularly for women, who (except during those 10 days last December) are judged against their male counterparts at every stage — from the application process, which includes physical and written exams, to the 19-week training — before they’re even sent out into the field.

Equal expectations regardless of gender is one of the pillars of the hiring campaign, as emphasized in this video on the Customs and Border Protection website. The message to female applicants seems to be equal parts warning and reassurance that they will not be treated differently from their male counterparts.

“If there’s something I can’t do exactly as my male counterparts, I’ll figure out a way to do it,” Ballistrea said. “Just because I’m female doesn’t mean I can’t take on the same challenges as my male agents.”

Ballistrea insists she’s “never faced personally institutionalized gender discrimination,” though that’s “not to say men I’ve encountered automatically embrace women in the job.” But all agents, male or female, are required to complete the same 19-week training, work the same range of shifts and patrol the same areas — some of which are extremely remote.

Even so, Ballistrea recognizes why driving around in remote areas of the mountains or desert, sometimes at night and often alone, might not appeal to many women.

“Securing our nation’s borders can be really dangerous,” Ballistrea said. “Interdicting narcotics, apprehending individuals who are illegally entering the U.S. — we’re looking for women who are up to that challenge.”

But although some aspects of the job might seem more hazardous or disconcerting to women, when it comes to the exponential rise in female migrants, the Border Patrol is looking for stereotypically female characteristics to deal with the often-traumatized migrants they apprehend.

Migrating to U.S. through Mexico is very perilous, especially for women. There are no official statistics, but Amnesty International estimates that six in 10 women who make the journey are sexually assaulted along the way.

“We recognize that women are vulnerable to being victims of sexual assault, and having female agents would increase the likelihood of a woman coming forward to report that,” Ballistrea said.

Using a female agent to search a female migrant who has just been apprehended is, Ballistrea said, “something small we can do to help women to feel more comfortable.

“We need women with good people skills who are able to demonstrate compassion to the people we apprehend,” she continued. “We deal with sensitive but real-life situations involving people who may or may not understand what’s happening to them.”

CBP hasn’t decided whether it will go for another women-only hiring bid. But Battaglia said more than 5,500 women submitted applications during that 10-day period in December, and they continue to do so.

“That female-only announcement gave us the opportunity to put the message that we’re interested in hiring women in front of the right people, to spark their interest,” Battaglia said.

The search for more female agents is not only a response to the changing demographics of the migrant population, but also, as Ballistrea said, an effort to “better reflect the workforce of America.”
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« Reply #38 on: March 25, 2015, 07:58:26 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/8-ways-gloria-steinem-improved-our-lives-114574784198.html
3/25/15
8 Ways Gloria Steinem Improved Our Lives Brought Destruction

Leading second wave feminist, activist, and writer Gloria Steinem turns 81 today, and this Upper East Sider is so, so, so much more than a pretty face. In many ways, her good looks helped her gain the attention to advance the agenda for women’s rights—but in many ways, they also held her back when she wanted to be taken seriously. In Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem, biographer Carolyn G. Heilbrun noted, “Steinem was able instantly to create a bridge to feminism when she revealed, simply by appearing, that one did not need to be man-hating or ‘shrill’—the media presentation of a feminist—to be a feminist. Though a combination of beauty and power threatened men, it reassured women.” Throughout her life, Steinem repeatedly faced comments from male reporters about her “stunning” looks “in spite” of her feminism. To one man, she responded, “Well, I should comment on your appearance but I don’t have the time.” Heilbrun aptly summed up Steinem’s persona: “Here was a woman who looked good enough to be one of Esquire’s sexy dolls, but who threatened to take away their rights to these dolls.” Last year for her 80th birthday, The New York Times published an op-ed to honor her: “This Is What 80 Looks Like.” Her friend Robin Morgan told columnist Gail Collins, “I think for her as an individual, in one sense aging has been a relief. Because she was so glamorized by the male world and treated for her exterior more than her interior.” This is a woman who seems to have it all—a top college education, good looks, and brilliant drive—but what has made her the icon that she is today is that she lends her vulnerabilities and strengths out to millions of women and men who face social and political injustices every day. Here are eight great reasons to honor, celebrate, and give gratitude on Steinem’s birthday.

1. Even before she became The Gloria Steinem (a.k.a. the face of feminism), she was penning empowering pieces for women. As a young woman, she wrote an article for Glamour: “The Student Princess (or How to Seize Power on the Campus of Your Choice).”

2. As a young writer, she went undercover as a Bunny at the New York Playboy Club, where she discovered that even beyond just being objectified, Bunnies were making far lower wages than advertised. After the article, “A Bunny’s Tale,” was published, she had trouble landing a new job and was made fun of in explicit cartoons—just because she spent a few weeks as a Bunny.

3. She co-founded feminist publication Ms. Magazine in 1971. “I realized as a journalist that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. Magazine,” she said. In 1976, it published a cover photo of a woman with a bruised face—it was the first national magazine to address domestic violence.

4. Her essays are timeless in their relevance and hilariously and eloquently composed in a graceful manner that highlights their truthfulness without alienating any readers. Her famous 1978 essay in Ms., “If Men Could Menstruate,” demonstrated how if men had their periods, “menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event.” She cheekily wrote, “Men would brag about how long and how much.”

5. She co-founded Take Our Daughters to Work Day in the summer of 1992 in order to address issues of self-esteem and exclusion amongst young girls. In 2003, the program was officially expanded to include boys. But even before the official name changed to Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, the annual event was meant to provide both boys and girls more opportunities to explore careers and dreams at an age when gender roles are more fluid.

6. In 1971, she was one of 300 female activists who founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, a multi-partisan organization that, to this day, works to actively support, recruit, and elevate women in political office.

7. She made feminism extremely accessible to a generation of women who had grown up in the 1950s and experienced the post-World War II backlash of women’s liberation. Whether or not you agree, she has criticized feminist academics for using words that “obfuscates, distances, and removes insight and information from readers who need them most.” In her fair judgment, she adds that feminist academics have had to do this “to get taken seriously and tenured in an academic world.”

8. She has spoken and written about growing up with her mentally ill invalid mother, who was incapable of taking care of her and who was consistently neglected by doctors who were apathetic to the health needs of women. She admits to her own faults—of the times she yelled at and was bitter towards her mother for not being who she could have been. “Perhaps the worst thing about suffering is that it finally hardens the hearts of those around it,” Steinem wrote. In sharing her stories of what her mother taught her about love, Steinem taught millions of men and women to forgive their mothers—and fathers—for not being perfect, and sometimes just surviving in an unfair world.
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« Reply #39 on: April 07, 2015, 05:39:24 pm »

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« Reply #40 on: April 10, 2015, 11:59:43 am »

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/why-more-women-are-choosing-not-to-have-children-115938588287.html
Why More Women Are Choosing Not to Have Children
4/8/15

More women are opting not to have children than ever before, according to new data released by the U.S Census Bureau. The data, which focused on women ages 15 to 50, show that childlessness continues to be on the rise in the U.S.

Nearly 50 percent of women ages 25 to 29 were childless in 2014. For women ages 30 to 34, 28.9 percent of them were childless in that same year — that’s up from 28.2 percent in 2012. Overall, the data found that nearly half (47.6 percent) of American women ages 15 to 44 did not have children last year, a jump from 46.5 percent back in 2012, according to Time.com.

STORY: I Got My Tubes Tied at 28 Because I Don’t Want Kids

There are several possible reasons why birth rates are dropping, including women delaying getting married and having children as their career takes a front seat. The census data found that women ages 40 to 50 in 2014 who were in managerial or professional occupations were more likely to be childless than women of similar age in other occupations.

STORY: I Chose Not To Have Children

Another factor may be the economy — birth rates tend to drop in response to a down economy. The Pew Research Center (PRC) found a decline in fertility that coincided with the 2008 recession. Compared to 2007, which had a record high number of births in the U.S, the fertility rate has dropped significantly from 69.6 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44 to 66.7 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44 in 2009, according to PRC.

In some cases, though, being childless is not a choice. There are couples who want children but may be unable to conceive because of age or health issues and can’t afford — or don’t want to go through —fertility treatments or adoption.

STORY: Should Jennifer Aniston Be Called Selfish for Not Wanting Kids?

For others, becoming a parent simply isn’t a calling. “I’ve always known I didn’t want kids,” Kathleen D. tells Yahoo Parenting. “I just never felt the desire. The main reason I don’t want them is because I really value my freedom. I always want to be able to take risks and move wherever I want in the world without having to worry about their school. If my husband and I lose everything, we only have to take care of ourselves.”

For Anne R. and her husband, not having children stemmed from a combination of never feeling ready for kids, as well as focusing on their careers and a passion for traveling at a moment’s notice. “After 11 years of marriage, I feel like I can say, we’re pretty good at being married, but I’m not sure we’d be great parents,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Now, I’m 35 and my husband is 37, so we kind of faced the decision, and it’s like, wow, we’re really happy and content and a lot of married couples don’t get to say that, so let’s just be okay with it and keep on doing what we’re doing.”

This is a growing trend that Ellen L. Walker, Ph.D., author of Complete Without Kids, sees in her counseling practice: “As a psychologist, I see many young women and men who are taking the decision of whether or not to become a parent as seriously as any other life choice,” Walker tells Yahoo Parenting. “Many are saying that they have other life aspirations that will take front and center in their futures. Others are very concerned about the state of the world, environmental, and world peace issues. They all realize that it’s now totally acceptable to choose a life without kids.”
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« Reply #41 on: May 26, 2015, 05:40:40 pm »

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=524151826491
Jezebels in the Pulpit: Why I Preach Against Women Preachers

Audio: http://mp3.sa-media.com/media/524151826491/524151826491.mp3
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« Reply #42 on: May 27, 2015, 12:28:36 pm »

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« Reply #43 on: September 30, 2015, 08:51:40 am »

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/152329548/justine-siegal-first-female-coach-in-majors
A's hire first female coach in MLB history
Siegal to serve as guest instructor in instructional league

9/29/15

The name of the national organization Justine Siegal founded is called "Baseball For All," a fitting title considering she just got a new job that, before now, had only been offered to men.

The A's announced on Tuesday that Siegal, who a few years ago became the first woman to throw batting practice for a Major League team, will serve as a guest instructor for the club's 2015 instructional league. Siegal will work with players Oct. 4-17 at the Lew Wolff Training Complex in Mesa, Ariz.

"This was a great moment," Siegal said. "I feel qualified for this job. I have a lot to learn, but I feel I've worked my way up the ranks. I can't stress enough how thankful I am for the opportunity."

The A's are the first Major League team to hire a female coach. In 2009, Siegal also became the first woman to be hired as a coach at any professional level, when she served as first-base coach for the Brockton Rox, an independent baseball team.

She also served as an assistant coach for the baseball team at Springfield College from 2008-10.

"We're thrilled that Justine will be joining us for instructional league," said A's assistant general manager David Forst, "She brings with her a wealth of knowledge and expertise from years of playing, coaching, and teaching the game, and all of our young players stand to benefit greatly from her time in camp."

Siegal's skill set is multi-layered and extends beyond the more traditional backgrounds many coaches bring to a team. She holds a Ph.D. in sport and exercise psychology from Springfield College, and an M.A. from Kent State University in sport studies. This part of her training makes her a logical resource in a setting like instructional league, where players split time between working on their craft on the diamond and learning about it in a classroom setting.

"There's field time and classroom time," Siegal said. "That's a normal part of the routine. Throwing batting practice, hitting fungos, a little bit of a classroom time. ... I'll do whatever they need."

Siegal has worked with the A's before. In addition to throwing batting practice to them -- along with five other teams -- during Spring Training in 2011, she spoke with the organization while directing a program that emphasizes gender equity in sport for Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, which promotes social justice and primary prevention education.

The A's were also one of several teams she worked with during MLB's league-wide domestic violence training.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there is a chance the instructional league stint could lead to a full-time coaching job within the organization. The A's, according to the Chronicle report, don't have their Minor League coaching assignments set and do not yet know about possible job openings.

Siegal is also identified as one of the most prominent champions of girls' baseball and equality, among boys and girls, in the sport. Baseball For All, which she founded and serves as the head coach, is a national nonprofit organization whose mission it is to provide meaningful instruction and opportunity in baseball, especially for girls.

Last spring, Baseball For All organized the first national girls baseball tournament for girls ages 10-13 in Orlando, Fla., drawing hundreds of players from around the country.

Soon, Siegal head to Arizona for instructional league, to work with grown men -- another environment in which she's perfectly comfortable.
And she'll also be showing a generation of young people that doors, albeit slowly, are indeed opening.

"I was 16 when I told my coach I wanted to be a college baseball coach," Siegal said. "He laughed at me and said a man would never listen to a woman on a baseball field. That's when I decided I was going to get a Ph.D., prove them wrong.

"Since then, I've been able to coach at the college and pro level. They will listen to you when you know what you're doing and you can make them a better player and show that you care about them."
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« Reply #44 on: December 03, 2015, 07:56:05 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/u-defense-chief-announce-plan-open-military-combat-170402866.html
U.S. military opens all combat roles to women
12/3/15

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military will let women serve in all combat roles, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Thursday in a historic move striking down gender barriers in the armed forces.

"As long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before," Carter told a Pentagon news conference.

"They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat. They'll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men," he said.

President Barack Obama called the move a "historic step forward," saying it would "make our military even stronger."

"Our armed forces will draw on an even wider pool of talent. Women who can meet the high standards required will have new opportunities to serve," Obama said in a statement

Carter said the opening to women would take place following a 30-day review period, after which they would be integrated into the new roles in a "deliberate and methodical manner" as positions come open. The waiting period enables Congress to review the decision and raise any objections.

He acknowledged the decision could lead to more debate over whether women would have to register for the draft, an issue he said was already under litigation. The U.S. military is currently an all-volunteer force, but young men are still required to register in case the draft is reactivated.

Asked whether the decision opened the door to women being required to serve in front-line combat positions, Carter said members of the military had some choices but not "absolute choice."

"People are assigned to missions, tasks and functions according to need as well as their capabilities," he said. "And women will be subject to the same standard and rules that men will."

MARINES HAD SOUGHT EXCEPTIONS

The decision drew a rebuke from the Republican chairmen of the armed services committees in the Senate and House of Representatives. But some other lawmakers welcomed the move.

"Secretary Carter's decision to open all combat positions to women will have a consequential impact on our service members and our military's warfighting capabilities," Senator John McCain and Representative Mac Thornberry said in a statement.

They asked the Pentagon for details on a Marine Corps request for exceptions, which was overridden by Carter, and information on how draft registration might be affected.

Two Democratic members of the armed services panels welcomed Carter's decision. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said it would "strengthen our armed forces" and Representative Niki Tsongas called it a "long overdue" move that would eliminate some of the barriers to advancement that women face in the military.

Carter's decision comes nearly three years after the Pentagon first instructed the military to open all positions to qualified women, including front-line combat roles. A restriction on such roles was seen as increasingly out of place during a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan in which women were often in harm's way.

Women represented about 2 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some 300,000 deploying to the conflict zones.

Since the Pentagon directive in 2013, the services have been examining whether women should be excluded from any military positions. Three women recently passed the rigorous Army Ranger course, but some 220,000 military jobs are still closed to women.

Carter said most of the services favored opening all jobs to women, but the Marine Corps had sought a partial exception for roles such as infantry, machine gunner, fire support reconnaissance and others. He said he considered the Marines' request and believed its concerns could be addressed.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Marine commandant, said he had given Carter his best advice on the issue and would now fully integrate women "in a manner that maintains our joint warfighting capability."

Women already serve in combat roles for the armed forces of a few developed nations, including Canada and Israel, but officials have said demand from women for such jobs in most NATO countries is very low.
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« Reply #45 on: December 30, 2015, 11:54:05 am »

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lego-builds-stronger-ties-girls-202900556.html
Lego builds stronger ties to girls
Danish toy maker finally succeeds after many attempts to straddle the gender gap

12/29/15

BILLUND, Denmark—Lego A/S has become successful at selling building bricks to girls.

For the Danish toy maker, it has been a long pursuit.

Although Lego kits from the 1950s and 1960s were designed as unisex toys, girls—that is, roughly half of the company’s potential market—have long shunned them as a boys’ game. And previous attempts to tailor Lego toys for girls turned into as many flops.

The latest line of Lego bricks for girls, launched in 2012 and known as Lego Friends, has been controversial, with feminist groups accusing the company of perpetuating gender stereotypes through pink-clad universes such as beauty parlors, pet shops and lounge bars.

But Lego executives say Lego Friends, which was initially designed as a temporary set, is proving a big money spinner and is here to stay as a permanent theme.

“We had made so much research and so much testing on girls that we were never in doubt about the product itself,” said Lego Senior Design Manager Benedikte Schinkel Stamp.

Lego, a secretive, family-owned company, doesn’t break out Lego Friends from its overall revenue, which reached 14.2 billion Danish kroner ($2.08 billion) in the first half. Still, according to research firm NPD Group, the market for girls’ construction toys in the U.S. and the main European countries tripled to $900 million in 2014 from $300 million in 2011, largely on the back of the Lego Friends sets. And Lego says the share of girls among Lego players, which stood below 10% in the U.S. before the launch of Lego Friends, has increased sharply.

On fueling stereotypes, the Lego executives said that while older sets for girls may have failed because they were unchallenging, the new ones require as much engineering stamina as the classic bricks.

“It’s a real construction toy,” said Lego Design Director Rosario Costa. “Not dumbing it down.”

Lego’s breakthrough in straddling the gender gap, compounded with the growing success of its licensed products, could allow the company founded by a carpenter during the Great Depression to overtake Mattel Inc. and become the world’s biggest toy maker by revenue.

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of Lego founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen, had decreed in 1963 that the company’s plastic bricks should be aimed at both boys and girls. But despite that professed goal, the Lego sets gradually became boys’ favorite.

The company focused on its male clientele, offering battle themes, an avalanche of superheroes, and almost eliminating girls from ads that featured boys and, occasionally, fathers.

“Girls got the message that Lego was not for them,” said Elizabeth Sweet, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis. Ms. Sweet remains critical. “Pinkified building sets may bring more girls into building but they still send the clear message that girls are fundamentally less capable than boys when it comes to building,” she said.

The first attempt to target girls with specific toys came in 1979, when Lego introduced Scala, a range of buildable jewelry. The line was discontinued a year later.

In 1992, Lego made a new push with Paradisa, pink and pastel-colored sets focused on beach life and horse riding. In a parallel effort, Lego began offering Belville sets, which came with names such as “Rosita’s Wonderful Stable” and “Vanilla’s Magic Tea Party.” The sets were compatible with the Lego brick system but came with larger pieces for an easier build.

Lego stopped offering the Paradisa line in 1997. That same year, the company sought to relaunch Scala, this time with dolls.

“Scala was a departure from the Lego system of bricks,” said Jonathan Bender, author of a book on Lego. “It was a different play experience that didn’t fit with the rest of the Lego universe.”

Lego kept Belville sets on its catalog for a few more years but pulled the plug on Scala in 2001.

In the early 2000s, Lego faced hefty financial difficulties and put new girl projects under wrap. In 2007, however, Ms. Costa, the design director, said she received a new brief: “To make a truly girly product that was truly a Lego product.”

Lego set up a research team to understand what had gone wrong, observing as girls tried to assemble firetrucks, cocktail bars, spaceships and discothèques.

The company found that—unlike what it had long thought—girls enjoy building as much as boys. The nuance is that they enjoy building different things, Ms. Costa said. Lego also tried gender-neutral packaging but found that girls, as well as parents, would more often pick sets for girls when they came in pink or purple.

After five years of work, Ms. Costa’s team was enthusiastic about launching Lego Friends. The new sets, however, immediately unleashed a torrent of criticism from feminist groups. A U.S. activist organization, the Spark Movement, gathered 50,000 signatures with an online petition in 2012 and requested a meeting with Lego executives. Another group, Feminist Frequency, also complained.

“We were so disappointed,” said Dana Edell, executive director of the Spark Movement. “Lego was sending a message that girls get to play with hair dryers while boys get to build airplanes and skyscrapers.”

Lego officials said they met with the Spark Movement and decided to adjust some marketing material. At the same time, Lego Friends proved a bigger hit than the company had anticipated.

Aside from slightly different mini-figures, Lego Friends is built using the same palette of some 2,000 bricks as regular Lego bricks. The bricks are more pink and purple, as is the packaging, and construction projects include cupcake cafes, pop star houses, and a supermarket.

“We just had to wait for the controversy to die out,” said Ms. Schinkel Stamp, the senior design manager.
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« Reply #46 on: January 07, 2016, 08:34:22 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/health/cdc-this-is-americas-most-sleep-deprived-group-155959714.html
1/7/16
These Are the Most Sleep-Deprived People in America

Sleep problems are widespread in the US, affecting adults and kids alike, but a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that single moms not only sleep less than any other demographic, they also have a harder time falling and staying asleep and they are more likely to wake up not feeling rested most mornings, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Related: Going to Bed Late Could Be Making You Fat

“These results are not surprising,” one sleep scientist not involved in the research tells Live Science. “People tend to sacrifice sleep when they have competing priorities, such as work, family responsibilities and social obligations.” Women in general seem to battle sleep issues more than men, and this starts early—right around a girl’s first period, he adds.

Related: How Sleep Position Can Give You Nightmares

But single moms wage the biggest battles. About 44% get less than seven hours of sleep a night, compared to 38% of single dads, 31% of women in two-parent families and 30% of women without kids. Interestingly, 10% of women without children say they regularly use meds to fall asleep—more than any other group in this survey, reports PBS.

Related: MRIs Reveal Hidden Toll of Childbirth

Kristi Williams, a sociologist at Ohio State University, tells the Huffington Post that sleep and other problems for single moms loom larger for society as a whole now that 41% of all births in the US occur to unmarried women. “The rise of single parenthood and non-marital fertility is arguably one of the most significant demographic trends in contemporary society,” she says. (Apparently a wife’s insomnia is harder on a marriage than a husband’s.)


Thirty percent of U.S. adults need more sleep
New research shows a lot of us could use more sleep. But who are the most sleep-deprived people out there? Dr. Jon LaPook finds out.
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore
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« Reply #47 on: January 08, 2016, 03:47:06 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/why-more-people-identifying-themselves-bisexual-212832436.html
Why are more people identifying themselves as bisexual?
A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests bisexuality in America is on the rise, specifically among women.

1/7/16

Women are three times as likely as men to be bisexual, according to a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday.

Of the 9,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 44 interviewed for the survey, 5.5 percent of women and 2 percent of men identified as bisexual. While the percentage of bisexual males only increased .8 percent from a similar survey conducted a few years ago, the percentage of bisexual females witnessed a 40 percent increase.

But both genders are showing a shift in general sexual attraction. When the 18 to 24-year-old segment was asked if they were attracted to only the opposite sex, 75.9 of women and 88.6 percent of men said yes.

“I’ve never seen that figure below 90 percent,” Ritch Savin-Williams, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University and author of several books on sexual orientation, told NJ Advanced Media referencing the male statistics. “There’s a progression away from straightness, if you will.”

But Dr. Savin-Williams clarifies this progression: there are not more people identifing personally as bisexual than before, rather these trends have always existing but bisexuals now feel more liberated to expose their sexuality.

“I never take this as a change in actual sexuality,” Savin-Williams said of survey shifts. The percentage increases reflect a new willingness to vocalize their sexuality, rather than a larger trend within American sexuality. “I always think of it as reflecting permission – that women now have greater permission to say they have some sexual attraction to other women.”

Savin-Williams’ perspective is widely shared amongst his peers.

Debby Herbenick, associate professor at Indiana University and author of the book “Sex Made Easy” told CNN that as awareness about bisexuality grows, it is easier for people to identify and then label themselves as bisexual.

Greater acceptance of causes affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities within the past few years is also evident in the data. When breaking down the overall statistic of female bisexuality, 7.8 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 24 identified as bisexual, compared to 5.4 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 34 and 4 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 34. The same gradual decline of bisexual identifiers as age increases is also present for men.

Casey Copen, a demographer at the CDC National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the study, said the larger rates of female bisexuality is consistent with past trends. Women have consistenly reported higher same-sex contact compared to men. And over the last few decades, women attracted to the same gender have identified less as lesbian and more as bisexual.

Overall, experts praise the CDC report for the specific nature of its questions. The survey differentiated between sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation, allowing respondents to answer with their relative level of attraction for each gender.

The report “makes clear that sexual orientation labels have a range of meanings for the people who use them,” says the Human Rights Campaign. “This finding underscores the fact that identities, while important, rarely tell the whole story of our experiences with sexual orientation.”
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« Reply #48 on: January 21, 2016, 10:15:04 am »

Bills announce hiring of full-time female assistant coach
1/20/16
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/bills-announce-hiring-of-full-time-female-assistant-coach-022721314.html

The Arizona Cardinals made a bit of history during training camp when they hired a female coaching intern for the preseason.
But the Buffalo Bills are taking it one step further: on Wednesday night, the team announced that Kathryn Smith is the team's new special-teams quality control coach, making her the first full-time assistant in the NFL.

It's a low-level position, but it's a start, and a position that many an NFL coach has held on his way up the coaching ladder.

Smith is well-known to Bills head coach Rex Ryan: she began her career with the New York Jets as a game day and college scouting intern, then became a player personnel assistant in 2007, a position she held for several years; Ryan was hired as head coach in 2009. In 2014, Smith changed positions and became assistant to the head coach.

When Ryan was fired by the Jets and hired a short time later by Buffalo, Smith followed him to Western New York, as administrative assistant to the head coach.

In a statement, Ryan said Smith is ready for the job change, and that he'd spoken to Cardinals' coach Bruce Arians about having a female on staff.

"Kathryn Smith has done an outstanding job in the seven years that she has worked with our staff. She certainly deserves this promotion based on her knowledge and strong commitment, just to name a couple of her outstanding qualities, and I just know she’s going to do a great job serving in the role of Quality Control-Special Teams," Ryan said.

“Kathryn has been working in a football administrative role and assisted the assistant coaches for years. She has proven that she’s ready for the next step, so I’m excited and proud for her with this opportunity. She will work with [special teams coordinator] Danny Crossman and [special teams assistant] Eric Smith involving a number of responsibilities.

“I consulted with Bruce Arians on this since he was really the first NFL head coach to make this kind of move when he hired a female linebackers coach through the summer. You can see the success some of these young ladies are having in the coaching profession, such as the young lady that is an assistant to Coach (Gregg) Popovich at the San Antonio Spurs [Becky Hammon], and realize how exciting this is for women like Kathryn Smith as well as the Bills organization.”
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« Reply #49 on: March 09, 2016, 08:50:27 pm »


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« Reply #50 on: March 16, 2016, 06:24:21 pm »

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« Reply #51 on: March 28, 2016, 09:47:20 pm »

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« Reply #52 on: June 19, 2016, 10:16:32 am »

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rome-likely-to-elect-first-female-mayor/ar-AAhi4JR?ocid=spartandhp
6/19/16
Rome likely to elect first female mayor

Rome is set to elect its first female mayor in a run-off vote in municipal elections.

Her victory would be a blow to Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

His PD party may also lose in Italy's financial capital, Milan, and faces tough battles in Turin and Bologna.

Ms Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer, won 35% of the vote in the first round two weeks ago, against 24% for Mr Giachetti.

Correspondents say a victory in Rome would give anti-globalist Five Star a platform for parliamentary elections due in 2018.

The next mayor of Rome will find a city mired in debts of more than €13bn (£10bn; $15bn) - twice its annual budget.

Romans are frustrated by potholes, piles of rubbish and serious deficiencies in public transport and housing, the BBC's James Reynolds in reports from the Italian capital.

Prime Minister Renzi has staked his political future on an October referendum in which he wants Italians to back far-reaching constitutional reforms.

The plan is to end Italy's tradition of "revolving-door" governments and inject stability after years of party infighting and legislative logjams.
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« Reply #53 on: June 26, 2016, 10:18:18 pm »

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« Reply #54 on: July 02, 2016, 09:49:25 pm »

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/2-women-make-history-for-sonoma-pro-baseball-team/ar-AAhSI0J?ocid=spartandhp#image=1
2 women make history for Sonoma pro baseball team

The first pitch of Friday night’s Sonoma Stompers baseball game was a breaking ball that went over the plate and into professional baseball history.

The pitch itself wasn’t that special, but the called strike was thrown by a woman, one of two who started the game for the Stompers against the San Rafael Pacifics at Arnold Field in Sonoma. It is believed to be the first time in more than 60 years that a team with more than one woman has participated in a professional baseball game.

Stacy Piagno, the 25-year-old pitcher from St. Augustine, Florida, made it through the first inning, gave up two runs in the second and lasted until the third inning. Behind her, in left field, was Kelsie Whitmore, 17, of Temecula (Riverside County), who Stompers officials consider the best female baseball player in the country.

“It’s exciting. I’ve got goosebumps,” said Lizette Dalquie, 64, of Sonoma, as she sat in the stands waiting for the first two female ballplayers in the independent Pacific Association to take the field. “It’s a breakthrough for the girls. The Stompers have opened the door for them and hopefully it will open up more doors.”

It wasn’t an All-Star performance for either player — Piagno gave up three hits, including two RBI doubles, and walked two. Two errors were also committed behind her. Whitmore walked and struck out in two plate appearances and the Stompers lost 8-4.

What’s important, though, is that they fit right in with the guys, said Theo Fightmaster, the Stompers’ general manager.

“They’re ballplayers,” Fightmaster said. “This is a big deal to me and it’s also a big deal because the game of baseball hasn’t done a great job of including women and giving girls a chance to play the game. The mission here is the advancement of women in baseball at all levels from Little League to the major leagues.”

The bright idea to recruit women was first floated by film director Francis Ford Coppola, who said in a news release that he always wondered why there weren’t co-ed teams in professional baseball given that the game doesn’t rely as much on size and strength as other sports.

“My family would play co-ed baseball games and inevitably the star player would always be an aunt,” said Coppola, whose Virginia Dare Winery, in Geyserville, has been a primary sponsor of the team over the past three years. “So when my Sonoma winery became involved with the Stompers, I had the opportunity to turn this thought into a reality and recruit these amazing women capable of playing alongside men.”

The women eventually picked are no slouches. Team officials scouted Piagno and Whitmore at the tryouts for Team USA, which is scheduled to play in the Women’s Baseball World Cup in South Korea this fall. Piagno no-hit Puerto Rico at the 2015 Pan Am Games and was a softball player at the University of Tampa. Whitmore, who recently graduated from high school, will attend Cal State Fullerton on a softball scholarship this coming year.

Both played baseball against boys in high school.

It isn’t the first time women have played baseball with or against men. The most famous mixing of the sexes occurred in the mid-1990s when famous knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro recruited the best female ballplayers in the country to play for the Colorado Silver Bullets.

The team, which was made up mostly of top college softball players, went up against minor-league and college teams at first, taking a few shellackings before lowering expectations. Later, they competed against lower level men’s teams and had a winning record in 1997, their last year before the Coors Brewing Company chose not to renew their sponsorship.

Two women, Ila Borders and Eri Yoshida, have pitched in professional baseball in the United States in recent years, but the Stompers are believed to be the first team with more than one woman playing in the U.S. since three women played in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s.

The Stompers have, in fact, been unusually progressive since the team was founded in 2014. Stompers pitcher Sean Conroy became the first openly gay professional baseball player in 2015. He threw a complete game shutout on his first start, Pride Night, and his teammates wore rainbow socks, Fightmaster said.
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« Reply #55 on: July 14, 2016, 11:05:18 am »

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« Reply #56 on: July 27, 2016, 11:45:23 am »

Truth!

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« Reply #57 on: August 18, 2016, 09:36:47 am »

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/why-7-million-american-men-aren%E2%80%99t-working/ar-BBvKWEy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Why 7 Million American Men Aren’t Working
8/18/16

The unemployment rate in the United States today is 4.9 percent — roughly half of what it was just after the end of the Great Recession, when it peaked at 10 percent in October 2009.

That is good news for the U.S. labor force, but there’s one segment of Americans who are increasingly absent from the working world: men, specifically prime-age men (ages 25 to 54) who are too old to be in school and too young for retirement.

A recent report from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers reveals that this is hardly a new problem. Rather, the labor force participation rate for prime-age men has been tumbling for decades, though the drop-off accelerated during the Great Recession.

According to the Brookings Institution, 7 million — or 12 percent — of prime working-age men in the U.S. are neither working nor looking for a job.

This begs the question: Who are these men, and why are they not working?

Jason Furman, chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Brookings that these are typically low-income men who either dropped out of high school or didn’t go beyond a high school diploma.

Although a small share of the men (less than 25 percent) have a breadwinning spouse and some collect government benefits such as Social Security Disability Insurance, Furman says the majority have given up on working after realizing that their limited skills and lack of education are hardly sought-after traits for employers. Says Furman:

“They’re not spending any more time on child care, not spending any more time on chores. They are spending a lot more time watching TV than men who are in the labor force.”

It’s a puzzling trend with potentially disastrous consequences, Furman says, as dropping out of the workforce is “associated with depression, with drug use, with suicide, with a range of bad outcomes.”

The report suggests steps the government can take to stem the tide. Furman says improving education and access to college, spending more on helping people find jobs, providing child care subsidies and paid leave, and expanding the tax subsidies offered to low-wage employees all would be good ways to lure prime-age men back to the workforce.
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« Reply #58 on: August 26, 2016, 12:09:26 pm »

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« Reply #59 on: August 28, 2016, 06:10:41 am »

Jezebel was a religious woman...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/for-hillary-clinton-and-democrats-a-public-shift-toward-%E2%80%98god-talk%E2%80%99/ar-AAia8zp?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
For Hillary Clinton and Democrats, a Public Shift Toward ‘God-Talk’

Four months ago, as Hillary Clinton turned her attention from the Democratic primary toward a fall race against Donald J. Trump, her campaign released a commercial titled “Love and Kindness.”

Against the soundtrack of a soulful ballad, the advertisement showed Mrs. Clinton in a series of warm embraces, including one with a grieving mother. The onscreen text included the phrase “do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, for all the people we can.”

Through secular eyes, the advertisement linked Mrs. Clinton to some resolutely uncontroversial concepts — hope, kindness, love, good. In doing so, it sought to soften the perception that she is untrustworthy and unlikable.

From a theological viewpoint, however, the commercial communicated in profound and coded ways. The music evoked a cappella gospel quartets. The text echoed an axiom of the Methodist Church, Mrs. Clinton’s lifelong denomination. The very title of the spot could well have been “Agape and Chesed.”

“Agape” is the Greek word for the Christian ideal of “the love of God operating in the human heart,” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once put it. And “chesed” is the Hebrew term for goodness or mercy, which the first full English translation of the Bible, made by Myles Coverdale in 1535, rendered as “lovingkindness.”

The religious resonances typify a strain of spiritual language that has been a part of Mrs. Clinton’s general election campaign, reaching its apogee at the Democratic National Convention.

During his speech to the Democratic convention, for instance, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey declared, “We are called to be a nation of love.” The Rev. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister who has led the “Moral Mondays” civil rights protests in North Carolina, told the delegates, “We must shock this nation with the power of love.” Senator Tim Kaine, the vice-presidential candidate, called his Catholic faith “a North Star for orienting my life” toward the “fight for social justice.” One of the most ubiquitous placards on the convention floor featured the religiously inflected pun: “Love Trumps Hate.”

This repeated adoption of God-talk by liberals signals a shift from the rhetorical norms of the last 40 years in presidential politics. Beginning with the prominent role of the group Moral Majority in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, conservative Republicans were the ones linking their political positions to Christian principles. In mobilizing their own constituency, Democrats deplored the specter of religious influence on public policy.

Now those roles have become more contested. Mr. Trump has received some high-level evangelical endorsements and has told conservative pastors in Florida that his presidency would preserve “religious liberty” and reverse what he called a government-enforced muzzling of Christians. He captured the Republican nomination in part by carrying a plurality of evangelical voters but has alienated a large portion of theologically conservative Roman Catholics and Mormons who are normally reliable elements in the Republican base.

The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, has given voice to the religious principle of love — an explicitly Christian concept that is espoused by most monotheistic faiths — as the root of liberal policies.

“It was extraordinary during the convention to hear this discussed explicitly and implicitly,” said the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and the author of a forthcoming book about the scriptural interplay of love and justice.

“Most of America views love in a very sentimental capacity,” Dr. Moss said. “But the way God loves us — agape — is not about me liking someone or me feeling good about someone, but about God making a deep demand” on humans to seek the kind of equitable society that Dr. King termed “the beloved community.”

Jennifer A. Herdt, a professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, made a similar observation.

“Liberals have been more comfortable talking about justice than love,” she said. “What we’re now seeing is the recovery of an understanding of love and justice as connected to each other, this notion of love reviving the heart of democracy. Because democracy has a heart. It’s not just about your individual project. It’s about coming together.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump’s serial disparagements of Muslims, Mexican immigrants, disabled people, African-American protesters and women — and his campaign’s popularity among white supremacists and anti-Semites — gave the Democrats a wide berth to position themselves as the party of lovingkindness.

However expedient in this election cycle, the party’s decision to use religiously inflected language reflects a shift. Of course, virtually every candidate for president has intoned the expected mantra “God bless America.” The “civic religion” of Cold War America, with its evocation of a “Judeo-Christian tradition,” was used by politicians of all stripes to contrast devout America from “godless Communism.”

Yet the first Catholics to seek the presidency — the Democratic candidates Alfred E. Smith, in 1928, and John F. Kennedy, in 1960 — had to publicly promise not to take orders from the pope in order to quell bigoted attacks. On issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and aid to parochial schools, the Democrats have coalesced around separation of church and state.

The one contrary example in modern liberalism was the civil rights movement. No matter how much progressives might wish to play it down, that political effort was organized by members of the clergy, mobilized through churches and infused with religious language. In a 1962 sermon, “Levels of Love,” Dr. King based the quest for civil rights in agape’s command that humans should emulate God by loving others, even their enemies, however different in class, race, religion, and political belief.

In this exceptionally divisive presidential campaign, such Christian language has connected to people in other faiths — especially those who have been on the recent receiving end of bias and hate crimes.

“The language of the civil rights movement is deeply familiar to anyone who is familiar with the Quran,” said Omid Safi, the director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center. “One of the most-known verses in the Quran is that God commands you to engage in love and justice. And to love your fellow human being in that way is to merge with the divine current.”

Valarie Kaur, a filmmaker and activist who is Sikh, said she heard in the convention’s language a version of her religion’s concept of “chardi kala,” meaning to serve God and humanity through “relentless love and optimism.”

“We’ve seen a resurgence of the language of love this election season for a reason,” she said. “The escalation of hate and vitriol has been so extreme and confrontational that Americans are hungry for a potent language in return.”

The Clinton campaign’s use of religious rhetoric does, of course, have its downside and its detractors. The hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, which is supposed to remain neutral during the party’s primary, showed its staff members trying to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders’s vigorous challenge to Mrs. Clinton by calling attention to his atheism.

Writing recently in Crisis Magazine, Paul G. Kengor, a political scientist and self-described Reagan conservative, retracted his praise for Mrs. Clinton’s attitudes about traditional marriage and religious liberty in light of her support for same-sex marriage.

John Cavadini, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, suggested that the Democrats’ “love language” can be heard in two very different ways depending on who is listening.

“It draws on Christian vocabulary but doesn’t appear to have overtly religious content,” he said. “It seems to come from a more secular, civil kind of spirituality. But when you start using that language, maybe it does bring about a certain elevation of political discourse and insert an ideal that is deeper than the rhetoric. At least it’s better than hate language.”
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