In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: February 2006

NYU’s OUTLaw is a “non-credible terrorist threat”

The Pentagon is watching you, NYU LGBT activists.

The Pentagon has classified NYU School of Law’s gay and lesbian advocacy group as “potentially violent” following the surveillance of a February counter-military protest at the university, according to media reports.

NYU’s OUTlaw is one of many “suspicious” civilian groups across the country surveyed by the Department of Defense over a recent 10-month period, according to a 400-page defense department document obtained by NBC News last month.

What were OUTLaw’s heinous, borderline violent activities? Protesting the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. They recently requested to see the information that the Pentagon is keeping on them, and were refused.

Luckily, though, it seems like the university is stepping up to the plate:

NYU spokesman John Beckman said the university is puzzled as to why an NYU group is listed as a possible terrorist threat, regardless of whether the threat is deemed credible.

“It seems very odd that anyone would consider a public protest — a public expression of free speech — a threat of any kind,” Beckman said.

“Particularly given that this very topic, the Solomon Amendment, is a matter before the Supreme Court as we speak.”

Beckman said he university is investigating the matter and has contacted U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton and Rep. Jerry Nadler, all New York Democrats.

“[We] asked them to look into this matter and seek answers from the Pentagon,” he said.

I hope they get some.

Women: What Is Your Biggest Health Concern?

Not to do the whole medical scare-tactic thing, but we should really be more focused on heart disease, which is the #1 killer of women over 25. It’s still largely seen as a male disease, and doctors notoriously misdiagnose and miss warning signs of heart disease in women. If you have a family history of heart disease, your risk of getting it will be even higher.

The findings are among those in a series of articles to be published today in two medical journals — the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Circulation — exploring the differences in heart disease between men and women. The subject has drawn increasing interest in recent decades, as scientists began to realize that the results of previous studies, done mostly in men, did not always apply to women.

Among the differences already known are that women with heart disease tend to be sicker than men by the time it is diagnosed, to benefit less from bypass surgery and to have more severe symptoms when they develop heart failure. Some of the difference is because women are older and frailer when they develop heart disease, but that does not account for all of it.

“…the results of previous studies, done mostly in men, did not always apply to women.” Doesn’t it seem like we hear this line a lot?

Heart disease, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of death in the United States and other developed countries. They killed 910,600 people in the United States in 2003, the most recent year for which data are available; more than half the deaths, 484,000, were among women.

Although women’s risk is greatest after menopause and increases with age, heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in all women older than 25. Overall death rates from coronary disease have declined in the past few decades, but most of the improvements have been in men’s rates.

For all the women out there, how many times have you been warned or made aware of your risk of heart disease compared to, say, breast cancer?

“To women as patients, the message is, look, if you have symptoms, don’t think because you are a woman you are immune to having a heart problem,” Dr. Sopko said.

And the message to doctors should be, “Look, if your patient has symptoms, don’t think because she’s a woman that she’s immune to having a heart problem.”