Sex & the Government

Ohio Bans Abortions After 20 Weeks

Ultrasound of fetus at 20 weeks (The Times in Plain English)

Another blow for women’s health: Ohio Governor John Kasich (yes, the former Republican presidential hopeful) signed a bill to approve banning abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. (To put this in context, most pregnancies are around 40 weeks long.)

The Senate Bill 127, signed December 2016, does not allow for exceptions in rape and incest cases. Supporters of the bill claim that the fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. (I’m curious how they know this; did they ask the fetus through the ultrasound?) The only exception will be for women whose pregnancy puts their health at risk.

Providers caught performing abortions after 20 weeks will charged with a “fourth-degree felony.”

Earlier that month, Kasich tried to sign a “heartbeat” bill, which would ban abortion after six weeks. A heartbeat pulse can generally be found around that time, though women may not know they’re pregnant. He eventually vetoed it due to overwhelming public pressure.

Around 1% of abortions occur after 20 weeks. The new law takes effect Mar. 14, 2017.

Bus Permits for the Women’s March Outnumber Bus Permits for the Inauguration by a 1:6 Ratio

Women's Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Women’s Strike for Peace-And Equality, Women’s Strike for Equality, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, August 26, 1970. (Photo by Eugene Gordon/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images)Women’s Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Friday, January 20th is Inauguration Day for the president-elect. The Women’s March takes place the next day. (Who’s going? I am!) D.C. can already tell the event is sure to be huge, judging by the number of bus permits secured. And the March might overshadow the previous day’s activities.

According to D.C. Council member Charles Allen, 1,200 buses have secured parking permits for the day of the March in RFK Stadium. (RFK Stadium has a capacity of 1,300 buses.) By contrast, just 200 buses have registered for parking permits for Inauguration Day. For every bus that has registered for the inauguration, six buses have registered for the March.

For President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2009, 3K buses registered for permits. Bus registrations for the current president-elect comprised 6.67% of that total.

Attendees for the March are expected to number as many as 200K.

Hopefully, this detail begins getting the message to the president-elect loud and clear that we will not be ignored.

New York City Issues the First U.S. Intersex Birth Certificate

Sara Kelly Keenan (LGBTQ Nation)

In December 2016, New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene re-issued a birth certificate to Sara Kelly Keenan. The action made history: Keenan’s corrected birth certificate denoted her intersex identity. (Keenan uses female pronouns.) The new birth certificate is the first one ever in the U.S. to note the gender identity.

The term “intersex” refers to a physical condition where one’s anatomy does not fully line up as either male or female. Keenan is “genetically male with female genitalia and mixed internal reproductive anatomy.” When Keenan was born, her birth certificate originally read “male,” but was changed to “female” three weeks later.

This change has been a long time coming, seeing as Keenan is 55 years old. She’s seen a lot of changes, especially within the fields of reproductive health and anatomy: When Keenan was born, “hermaphrodite” was the commonly accepted term for her condition.

Previous to the birth certificate change, Keenan had self-identified as non-binary (that is, neither male nor female).

Hillary Clinton Tweet Third Most-Shared Tweet Globally

Hillary Clinton (Slate)

Even though Hillary Clinton lost the election (though not the popular vote!), one of her tweets ranked third in most-shared globally. So…consolation prize?

Twitter revealed its top trends last week, and shared Clinton’s tweet that’s been shared multiple times around the world:

Hillary Clinton’s tweet (The Hollywood Reporter)

According to Twitter, the tweet of the already-iconic quote has been re-tweeted 634K+ times and favorited 1M+ times.

First Female President of South Korea Impeached

South Korean President Park Guen-hye (NovoRossia)

South Korean President Park Guen-hye made history in 2012 by becoming the first woman elected to the country’s highest office. Now, she’s made history for a more ignominious reason: Park is the first female president of South Korea to be impeached.

Park is battling various charges of corruption. The South Korean National Assembly voted to impeach her 234 to 56. The vote now will move to the Constitutional Court, which could take up to six months.

And if the Constitutional Court is in favor?

Park will be formally removed from office if six of the court’s nine justices support her impeachment, and the country would then hold a presidential election within 60 days.

According to a recent poll from Gallup Korea, Park’s current approval rating sits at a measly 5%. Incredibly, this is an improvement from her 4% approval rating. Poll respondents supported her impeachment at a rate of 81%.

Civil Rights Activist Viola Desmond Will Be the First Woman on the Canadian $10 Bill

Viola Desmond (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Canada has always been on the progressive side of things, and now it’s extended to their money. The country has elected to put a black woman on one of their bills.

Desmond will be featured on the Canadian $10 bill:

According to the Bank of Canada, there are 132 million $10 bills in circulation right now. The number of new banknotes printed annually fluctuates from year to year.

Said woman Viola Desmond was a civil rights activist. In Dec. 1946, she bought a floor seat in the main house of a movie theater. The main house was reserved for whites, whereas Black movie-goers were supposed to sit upstairs in the balcony. Desmond was arrested and jailed, on account of not paying the tax difference between the two seats. The tax difference was…one cent. One. Cent.

In 1947, Desmond tried to appeal the charge and lost. She dies in 1965 at age 50, and was granted a public pardon and apology in 2010.

It’s important to note that Desmond’s act came nine years before Rosa Parks gave up her bus seat in the United States, setting off the U.S.’s civil rights movement.

As Ryerson’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Staffer Darrell Bowden puts it:

“Viola was not the Rosa Parks of Canada. Rosa Parks was the Viola Desmond of America.”

Until this point, the only woman on Canadian money has been Queen Elizabeth of England. But Desmond is the first Canadian woman who will be on Canadian money. She’s also the first one who won’t be part of a group: Canada’s Famous Five suffragettes graved the $50 bill from 2004 until 2011.

Desmond beat out 26K+ submissions from the public. The bill with her face will go into circulation in 2018.

Nikki Haley is the First Woman and Minority Named to the Trump Administration

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (Politico)

President-elect Donald Trump (I threw up a little just now writing that) has named his pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He’s selected Republican Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley. Haley is the first woman Trump has selected for his administration.

Haley’s also the first minority Trump has selected: She’s of Indian descent, and her parents are Sikh.

Haley has served two terms as governor of South Carolina, and is known for advocating removing the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s State Capitol grounds.

She is the first woman governor of South Carolina, as well as the first minority governor of the state.

According to CNN, “Haley will keep serving as governor until the Senate confirms her nomination.”

Men Hostile Towards Women More Likely to Support Trump

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (US Weekly)

If you know any men who come off as hostile towards women (and let’s be honest, we’ve all ran across more than one) they’re more likely to support Trump. It’s science!

Three researchers at The Washington Post surveyed 700 U.S. citizens this past June. (Keep in mind that it was before Trump’s hot-mic revelations that he’s sexually assaulted women in his past.) The goal was to see how ideas about gender, specifically women, affected a potential voter’s ability to support Trump. The researchers tested for this by giving respondents surveys with statements about women and feminism, and then asked who said respondent was supporting in the presidential election.

The results are interesting:

We found that sexism was strongly and significantly correlated with support for Trump, even after accounting for party identification, ideology, authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. In fact, the impact of sexism was equivalent to the impact of ethnocentrism and much larger than the impact of authoritarianism.

To put this plainly: “Hostile sexism was nearly as good at predicting support for Trump as party identification was.”

No wonder all the woke baes are all #ImWithHer.

Donald Trump’s Campaign Has Spent $3.2M+ on Hats Alone

Donald Trump (News2Morrow)

Seriously. I am not fucking with you, I promise.

We’re finally getting to see how the Trump campaign has been spending its money. And the results are…illuminating. Let’s call it that. I don’t think that the results really shocked anyone, as far amount of money goes, but it’s a little, uh, different (to use a real Southern phrase).

The Washington Post got ahold of Trump’s Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, which detail his campaign spending. The report covered June 2015 through September 2016. During that timeframe, Trump’s campaign has spent $1.8M on polling data. But Trump appears to be pinching his pennies so he spend more in another area: namely, hats.

Yes, hats. The campaign has thus far spent $3.2M on hats alone. Within that, the campaign paid $423K to the company that made his “Make America Great Again” hats.

And it’s not just the hats Trump likes:

Overall, Trump’s spent about $15.3 million on collateral — shirts, hats, signs, etc. — more than he has spent on field consulting and voter lists and data.

In case you can’t do math, here’s that info in graph form:

Total Trump campaign spending by category (The Washington Post)

As the Post says of Trump, “he has spent at least twice as much on collateral as he has on payroll.” The Trump campaign employs a lean staff of 82 people.

But come on, with all the other shit that we’ve learned about this (I can’t, in good conscience, call him a man)…thing, this piece of information is almost innocuous and eccentric. Doesn’t take away from the absolute craziness that is this election, though.

Clinton vs. Trump Supporters on Match.com

Dating (The Love Hawk)

Earlier this year, Match.com released its annual Singles in America study. The study surveyed 5K+ singles ages 18-70 in 2015 on a variety of subjects pertinent to those who date. The results are fascinating, in no small part because Donald Trump was still a sideshow attraction and not a full-blown potential threat at the time.

Without further ado, here are some findings:

Clinton supporters are:

70% more likely to discuss politics
102% more likely to lie about their number of past sexual partners
2,133% more likely to expect no physical contact

Trump supporters are:

82% more likely to be unemployed
116% more likely to talk about an ex
1,104% more likely to expect sex on the first date

But some benefits are bi-partisan, as the press release touts:

Individuals who are passionate about political issues (regardless of their affiliation) have better sex, with 13% more orgasms; they are also 32% more likely to experience multiple orgasms.

If that’s not a good reason to get politically involved/educated (or fuck across the aisle, at the very least), I don’t know what is.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.