Trolling (not the bad kind) through the ole inbox today turned up an interesting bit of email from Christine Brooks, PhD and Shayna Korb, two feminist women researchers from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California interested in the spiritual experiences of feminist and activist individuals.
Dear readers, they’d like your perspective for a project they’re currently carrying out on this very topic:
We are two Third Wave feminist researchers with our own strong spiritual leanings and have noticed a lack of information on how our feminist peers live out their own spiritual lives. We’re doing a pilot study on third wave feminists’ experience of spirituality, a study that to our knowledge, has never been studied before.
If you identify as a woman and a third wave feminist and you’re between the ages of 18-40, fill out our short (we estimate under 20 minutes) narrative survey!
Sounds like a cool project!
Want to offer your two cents? You can find more info and the link to the survey here. Happy participating, spiritual third wavers!
Are you engaged in some fun, flashy, or otherwise fab feminist or womanist activity, event, or campaign? You are! Well, we want to know about it so we can help you share it with the world. Send us your PSAs, press releases, photos, whatever, and we’ll post an announcement to help big up you and your crew. Email us at anastasia [at] confabulous [dot] ca or sabine [at] confabulous [dot] ca to give us the news!
Attention hetero ladies–contrary to what country crooner Mickey Gilley may have led you to believe back in 1976, you do not, in fact, “look prettier at closing time” (or apparently at any other point in the day) to a drunken potential date, though you may find him hotter if you’ve imbibed.
A new study published in the British Journal of Psychology announces this curious discovery. Researchers showed (presumably heterosexual) women and men–in various states of inebriation–pictures of members of the opposite sex and asked them to rate their attractiveness. According to a summary in the Daily Mail:
While the women rated the faces in the pictures as more attractive after drinking, alcohol had no effect on the men’s judgement.
On the surface, the study may seem rather shallow, but, in fact, its findings have some important legal implications:
Drinking did not affect either sex’s ability to judge age, leading to the researchers saying that the influence of alcohol should not be a mitigating factor in the case of a man accused of under-age sex.
Not surprisingly, since their publication, the results have spawned a spate of news stories, like this one and this one. Interestingly–and disappointingly–among the crop are a number that downplay or completely ignore the portion of the study’s outcome related to the women’s perceptions of men or how men’s ability to judge age accurately despite drunkenness might affect the legal outcome of sex with minors cases. Instead, in many quarters is much guffawing over the fact that men apparently no longer can use the so-called “beer goggles” excuse when their buddies tease them about the women they take home. Sigh.
You know that feeling when you’re reading the paper and you come across a story that makes you think, “Some researcher got funded to study the obvious? And then come up with findings that are…obvious?” That’s the feeling I had when I stumbled across this story from last Friday’s Globe and Mail. “A nosh during labour not ‘a bad thing,’” reads the headline, referring to the shitty advice old adage advising women against eating during the labour process, ’cause if you have to have a C-section, and if you have to have general anesthetic during a C-section, then you might barf and breathe in the barf and die.
*sigh*
Then there is common sense: being in labour is akin to sprinting as hard and fast as you can for a minute at a time, every few minutes, for many hours or days. The ol’ bod just might need some sustenance to get through that process.
But thank goodness the science people have come on side with what birth mothers and midwives already know!
British researchers conducted a large trial involving 2,426 women having their first child. Half of them were told to eat a small amount of food such as bread, biscuits, fruits, non-fat yogurt, isotonic drinks and fruit juice. The others were advised to drink only water and chew on ice chips. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, revealed that the rate of vomiting was almost identical in both groups – about 35 per cent.
The only thing that’s really surprising here is that only 35% of women barfed in labour. To me, hurling while trying to squeeze out my daughter seemed pretty routine. Here’s the oh-so-shocking closer:
“So, over all, we basically found eating wasn’t a bad thing,” said senior researcher Andrew Shennan, a professor of obstetrics at King’s College London. [...] He added that the study participants who were given the option to eat “felt more in control and certainly liked it.”
Gee, you think?
I’m happy this research was conducted because it might actually change obstetrical practices for the better. And yes, hospitals, parents and birth attendants need and want the best-quality information about how to make births safe. But come on! You do not need an empirical study to know that having the option to eat during labour makes life a teensy bit better for the labouring woman (and therefore the expectant baby) and does not make the process any less safe. Intuition, basic biological facts (I’m hungry = I need to eat) and anecdotal evidence should suffice.
I just found out about The Motherhood Project, a study being conducted by some grad students in the U.S. They are looking for pregnant women in their second and third trimesters to participate in a brief survey before and after they give birth.
Our IRB approved, multiple-choice survey is about the experience of becoming a mother. Participants will be asked to complete two nearly identical surveys regarding their personal beliefs, practices, feelings and behaviors: once during pregnancy and will be contacted again 4-6 months after giving birth.
With your help, we may learn more about the process of becoming a mother and how it may inform a woman’s identity, relationships, spirituality, and mental health.
This sounds like a really worthwhile project, something that will help advance our understanding of the craziness that is becoming a mother.
RT @heatherplett: Love this from your podcast @starshyne - "Working harder and stronger at the wrong strategy doesn't make it into the r ... 12 hours ago
Trolling (not the bad kind) through the ole inbox today turned up an interesting bit of email from Christine Brooks, PhD and Shayna Korb, two feminist women researchers from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California interested in the spiritual experiences of feminist and activist individuals. 
Confabulous badges!
