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Feminists

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proverbialwisdom

(4,959 posts)
Mon Mar 24, 2014, 08:04 PM Mar 2014

Discussions among intelligent informed women, all. Scorn 'em or support them but just hear them 1st. [View all]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Gormy Cuss (a host of the Feminists group).

http://www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/vaccinations-and-other-things-i-dont-want-to-discuss/#

About Mayim

Mayim Hoya Bialik is best known for her lead role in the 1990s NBC sitcom Blossom, as well as for her portrayal of the young Bette Midler in “Beaches.” She has also appeared in Woody Allen’s “Don’t Drink the Water,” HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and is currently appears as Amy Farrah Fowler on the hit series The Big Bang Theory.

Bialik is the grandchild of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and she received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2007 from UCLA, specializing in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in adolescents with Prader-Willi syndrome. She is the celebrity spokesperson for the Holistic Moms Network, a national non-profit organization dedicating to supporting holistic and green parenting and living. Bialik gave birth to a son in 2005, and a second son (born at home, largely unassisted) in 2008.

She is the co-founder and chair of youth branch of the Jewish Free Loan Association, and is devoted to a lifestyle of attachment parenting, homeschooling, vegan cooking, and Jewish text study. She is the author of “Beyond the Sling” about her experience parenting by intuition, published by Simon and Schuster.

To read all of Mayim’s previous posts on Kveller, click here, and to read her posts on Raising Kvell, click here. And follow Mayim’s blog here.


May 21 2012
Vaccinations, and Other Things I Don’t Want to Discuss
By Mayim Bialik at 3:31 pm


ESSAY AT LINK


http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/03/trutherization-of-vaccine-injury.html

COMMENT:

The recent and escalating tirades against Jenny McCarthy and other females who publicly discuss vaccine safety have to be called out for what they are- liberally correct slut shaming. Women are viciously attacked and ridiculed- men are left alone (apologies to Andrew Wakefield- some exceptions to the general rule). The nexus of this deplorable practice is the Slate-Wash Post-Daily Beast-Bill Gates bootlicking crowd.

Katie Couric, the former anchor of CBS Evening News fer Christ's sake, is called "the next Jenny McCarthy" for daring to do a story on vaccine injury. Her years of experience as a tough, fair minded journalist anchoring Today Show as well as CBS are instantly trumped by her gender and blond hair when she does a vaccine injury story. The leftie blogosphere launched a coordinated attack on Couric for being a female- the facts of her story were not challenged. The lefties kind of forgot to report that Japan, France, and Israel governments have all withdrawn recommendation for HPV series due to adverse reactions.

Dr. Diane Harper got tthe same business after the Couric story She is blond, so damn her credentials and let the slut shaming begin! Lucija Tomljenovic gets publicly ridiculed but her co-author Chris Shaw is strangely left alone- see a pattern here?

The difference in how men are treated is striking. Consider what happened to Morley Safer back in 1976 when he did the CBS 60 Minutes segment on swine flu causing over 40,000 Americans to become ill. Nothing happened. No media stories of his erectile dysfunction and tinfoil hats. His vaccine injury story was taken seriously.

When it comes to other women's issue- this same leftie clique rushes to the defense. The Commonwealth of Virginia tried to impose state mandated, medically unnecessary transvaginal probes on women seeking abortion services- the alarm bells went off and the earnest hand wringing began. The term "state sponsored rape" was actually floated. Wonder where Isaac Hayes stands in that issue?

Unfortunately the rape analogy is only too appropriate. A few hundred thousands women take their kids to the doctor and accept the vaccine schedule. When these same women report eyewitness accounts of vaccine injury, they are immediately transformed into hysterical, ignorant, inept caricatures who are "asking for" a vaccine injury diagnosis to cover up their own genetic or other shortcomings....they are slut shamed for daring to speak out.

Posted by: Ottoschnaut | March 22, 2014 at 09:10 AM



Ottoschnaut and Dan, There is no doubt that the most common way to dismiss a woman's point of view is to call her a nut or a slut. I don't think you can blame this on "liberal correctness". Michelle Bachman got plenty of heat from the right on Gardasil. http://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-blast-bachmann-alarmist-hpv-vaccine-retardation-argument-2011-9 <>

Posted by: shannon wasserman | March 23, 2014 at 02:35 PM



Here Here, Ottoschnaut!
There is a good documentary out there called MissRepresentation which is all about the various types of discrimination & stereotypical portrayal against women in the media & elsewhere and the organization does great things. I keep wondering if the makers and supporters of the film have ever stopped to wonder what happens at the intersection of such embedded discrimination and the medical industry, a concept that wasn't addressed in the film.

<>

Womens' health freedom does not just encompass the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, it includes the right to the health approach of one's choice, and right to freedom from forced medical intervention, and the right to control the health of one's offspring - and they all affect the female's ability to work and take part in the political system. But as autism parents know, it's hard to be politically active when the child that should mature into a certain level of self sufficiency instead remains or reverts into complete dependency.

This right to control one's own body should not be compartmentalized, but it is, and those in power strive to keep it that way. It is the exact same right that allowed for the end to slavery, that demands justice against pedophiles and rapists and kidnappers, that gives all adults the right to vote & control the laws that control our boundaries so that we all may coexist, that allows for conscientious military objection, that allows the right to be gay, and that demands limits to environmental contamination when it impinges on one's health and property and joint resources. People do not have the right to force others to do with their bodies something they don't want to do. But politicians do their best to keep these issues separated, despite the fact that they are the same issue over and over and over again.

In the end, I'll be surprised if the health freedom groups, LGBT groups, women's rights groups, parental rights groups,anti-war groups, minority rights groups, and environmental rights groups, and even religious rights groups don't end up forming some kind of issues trade union to expand their bases of influence. It could happen, if only they can each see beyond the blinders that the most powerful and elite have so effectively donated that they unwittingly don when they advocate in their windowless silos.

Posted by: Jenny | March 22, 2014 at 02:51 PM


http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/03/debating-vaccines-online.html

COMMENT:

I believe that peanut butter has not harmed my child.
Other parents believe peanut butter harms their children.

Why? Physical observation, which can be verified by science.
Some call it empirical evidence; others dismiss it as "anecdote."

Vaccine manufacturers and policymakers have too much invested in money and reputation, so they deny consumers' adverse field observations and avoid scientific investigation.

If VAERS and VSD reports of brain inflammation and death aren't enough to motivate industry and government, what is?

In the real world devoid of consumer mandates, lack of accountability by product manufacturers inevitably leads to lack of customers.

Posted by: nhokkanen | March 21, 2014 at 01:37 PM


http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/03/to-journalists-on-the-eve-of-autism-awareness-month.html

To Journalists on the Eve of Autism Awareness Month
By Anne Dachel


Dear Fellow Members of the Media: (That includes all of you at CBS, NBC, CNN, Forbes, New York Times, Chicago Trib, LA Times, et al.)

April is coming up and I wanted to say a few words about the month dedicated to autism awareness. Many of us in the autism community are tired of stories about lighting the world up in blue and celebrating autism as if parents should be happy about a diagnosis. We've endured years of feel-good coverage about awareness, fund-raising walks, and no explanation for the mystery of autism.

Most of all, we want you to do your jobs.

Do you know what reporters are really supposed to do?

Five years ago I found this youtube by Bob Woodward. (Remember Bob? He and Carl Bernstein were the famous reporters at the Washington Post in the 1970s, who exposed Watergate and helped bring down a corrupt president. They even made a movie about them.



Woodward said that a good journalist does three things when covering a story and I thought I'd pass them on to you with the hope that you would apply them to your reporting on autism.

First, you're supposed to CHECK SOURCES.

Woodward: "It means checking everything, talking to half a dozen or even a dozen people for a day story. If it's something longer, you want to totally surround and saturate the subject."

Second, you need DOCUMENTATION.

Woodward: "I have not really ever seen a story in a newspaper or on television or even on radio that couldn't be enhanced with some sort of documentation that would support or add more detail to what the story is about."

Third, you're supposed to CHECK INFORMATION FIRST HAND.

Woodward: "Get your ass out of your chair and get over there."

This is the kind of stuff we the public think reporters do when they cover a topic, so when you start giving us stories about Autism Awareness this April, we want you to do it like professional journalists.

Instead of stories with photos of happy kids on playground equipment or a 30 second video of a cute four year old interacting with a speech therapist on the news, show us the dark side of autism--the teenagers in diapers, the non-verbal children who spin and rock endlessly, and the really sick autistic kids with seizures and bowel disease. People deserve to know just how badly autism can affect a child.

Talk to real parents who have enormous fears about the future. They're the people whose teenage children who will be aging out of school in a couple of years and they have no idea what's out there for them. You might even describe this as A CRISIS. Members of the press never use that word when talking about autism, but trust me, a serious health problem with no known cause or cure that affects 2 percent of children really is a crisis.

<>

Posted by Age of Autism at March 24, 2014 at 5:45 AM

Needless to say, none of these mothers of children with autism are "antivaxxers," a gross mischaracterization (by self-righteous manipulative bullies, IMO) found even on DU.
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