I was in Boston and had opportunity to shoot some video of the veterans memorial in the Boston Commons…
May 12, 2012
Adversity and Strength: Young Cancer Patients Sing “Stronger”
The hemoncology floor of Seattle Children’s Hospital performs Kelly Clarkson’s song “Stronger”
March 24, 2012
Why Women Make Better Bosses [livescience.com]
by David Mielach / livescience.com
Women make better bosses. That’s the finding of a new survey, which found that women in management positions lead in a more democratic way, allow employees to participate in decision-making and establish interpersonal channels of communication.
“In line with known gender differences in individual leadership, we find that in workplaces with more women managers, more individualized employee feedback is carried out,” Eduardo Melero, study author and a professor in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid department of business administration, said. “Likewise, we can see evidence, although weaker, that in these workplace decisions are made more democratically and more interpersonal channels of communications are established.”
Those interpersonal channels of communication facilitated increased communication between management and employees in companies with women in management positions. This has a twofold benefit for these organizations. First, these companies are able to make more well-informed decisions, since employee feedback will be utilized in the decision-making process. Additionally, employees will also have the feeling of contributing to and having their opinions heard at work.
“Women managers seem to be more inclined to use these types of practices, individually, as well as promoting them among the rest of the management team,” Melero said. “And as such, a management team with more women could be more effective (keeping all other factors constant) when implementing them.”
The research, which is published in the Journal of Business Research, was based on data from the Workplace Employment Relationships Survey, a survey of workplaces in the United Kingdom. Melero analyzed this data by looking at the number of women in management positions in companies and the leadership tactics employed at those companies.
March 21, 2012
Turns Out Being Born a Woman Is a Major Financial Mistake [jezebel.com]
by Cassie Murdoch / jezebel.com
As if being a woman wasn’t difficult enough—what with all the not having control over important decisions about our own bodies, making less money than our male colleagues, and, yes, let’s play the childbirth card—we are also routinely hit with financial penalties just for having the balls to be born with a vagina. That’s right, women pay more for everything from razors to houses to health care for no reason other than that we are women. It’s like our own personal vagina tax, and it sucks.
In fact, it’s enraging. You might think such gendered pricing practices would be illegal and we wouldn’t even have to worry about them, but alas they are not. Of course, there are federal civil rights laws which project against discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, but the same cannot be said for the sales of goods and services. Some states and cities have their own statutes, but they often don’t make much of a dent in these kinds of widespread problems.
In fact, this problem is so pervasive that often we don’t even notice it’s happening—we just accept the cost of items as a given, sort of like the air around us. But there are lots of little ways we’re charged more than men. Marie Claire has a detailed run-down of how this plays out, and they point specifically to dry cleaners, who often charge women three times as much to clean shirts which are virtually identical to mens’ dress shirts. They justify this by saying that these “blouses” require extra labor to press. Hmm, seeing as I wear a larger shirt size than some of my male friends, yet their shirts fit on the pressing machine, this hardly seems possible.
Then there are things like haircuts and women’s toiletries, which are typically priced higher than their men’s counterparts, despite the fact that, even though they are all wrapped up in them purty pale pink packages, they are virtually the same products. (Maybe pink ink is just astronomically expensive?) Obviously retailers don’t like to admit to it, since if they did, we’d come running at them, nails filed to a point and extra-gentle razors in hand, demanding a refund, but it is happening.
February 20, 2012
Sunday Lite: A Little Lite and a Little Bright to End the Night
Some of my artwork which I created during my transition many years ago. -hh
February 4, 2012
Science Uncovers Genes Governing Male and Female Behaviors [jezebel.com]
by Cassie Murdoch / jezebel.com
We tend to think of the differences between men and women in broad, comprehensive terms. Women are more nurturing, men are more aggressive, and on and on. Of course we rationally understand that these traits are influenced by our sex hormones, but on a deeper level we seem to regard the differences in our behavior as somehow fixed. But now new research is showing that, in fact, there are very specific genes that regulate male or female behaviors, and they can be turned on and off at will—which could drastically alter the way we think about what drives us to be who we are.
The connection between sex hormones and behavior has long been understood, but the relationship between hormone levels and gene expression in our brains was less clear. To better understand it, the research, which was conducted by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, aimed to locate a number of genes that are influenced by testosterone and estrogen and in turn dictate specific sets of male and female behaviors in mice.
To do this, lead researcher Dr. Nirao Shah and his team analyzed sex differences in gene expression in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that is involved with sensing hormones. They managed to locate 16 genes that were expressed differently in males and in females, and showed that the different expressions were regulated by the sex hormones.
But what they also found is that they could isolate parts of classic male and female behaviors and pinpoint them as being governed by their own particular genes. It’s fascinating to think of all of our sex-specific quirks as connecting back to specific genes that can be turned on and off.EurekAlert offers a useful analogy for understanding the relationship between the hormones and genes. If you think of your brain as a house that’s wired into the power grid, then,
A sex hormone is similar to the main breaker that connects the house to the utility pole and regulates electricity to the entire house. Individual genes influenced by sex hormones are like the light switches in each room, making it possible to turn the lights on in the kitchen while leaving the bedroom dark.
Shah explains how this plays out in the mice:
It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components. Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting other aspects of male and female behavior.
In other words, by flipping the switch, you could turn off a mouse’s sex drive, willingness to spend time with their young, and even their desire to pick fights—while leaving every other behavioral element unaffected.
Imagine how crazy it would be if we could do that in humans. Don’t like it that your boyfriend gets into fights at the bar? Just flip the switch. For now, Shah says that understanding the genes that drive male and female behavior can guide researchers to find the genetic basis for other complex social behaviors. And along the same lines, it could prove very useful in locating which genes are involved in diseases where a gender difference exist, such as autism, which affects four times as many males as it does females.
As good as all that sounds, there is something a bit unnerving about contemplating your genes as a collection of switches that govern your behaviors. On some level it would be a dream to be able to turn behaviors off and on at will—it would revolutionize the way we interact, but, on the more terrifying side of things, it would also totally change our conception of what makes us who we are. Fortunately, manipulating them is a complicated process. So it looks like we have a while until we’re all going to need to start popping pills to fine tune ourselves. That’s a relief, because for most of us managing the hormones we already have is a big enough job.
http://jezebel.com/5881919/science-uncovers-genes-that-govern-male-and-female-behaviors
January 30, 2012
Cynthia Nixon says she’s gay by ‘choice.’ Is it really a choice? [latimes.com]
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog
Former “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon says she is gay by “choice” – a statement that has riled many gay rights activitists who insist that people don’t choose their sexual orientation.
Here’s what Nixon, who recently shaved her head to play acancer patient in a Broadway production of “Wit,” told the New York Times Magazine:
“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
The question of whether sexual orientation is subject to nature or nurture – or some combination of both – has been hotly debated for years. If it is not an immutable characteristic, that would imply that a gay person could be somehow transformed into a straight one. In other words, homosexuality could be “cured.” Which in turn implies that being gay is some sort of illness.
Hence, the offense taken to this point of view.
Nixon seemed to anticipate the controversy her remarks might generate. She also told the New York Times:
“A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”
As expected, this did not go over smoothly with everyone. Writing on AmericaBlog Gay, John Aravosis wrote that Nixon “needs to learn how to choose her words better, because she just fell into a right-wing trap, willingly. When the religious right says it’s a choice, they mean you quite literally choose your sexual orientation, you can change it at will, and that’s bull.”
So, what’s the scientific evidence that sexual orientation is either a biologically determined trait or an actual choice?
A Spanish study published in 2009 in the journal Investigacion Clinica summarizes the evidence forgenetic influences. Based on research comparing identical twins, fraternal twins and even siblings who were adopted, scientists have determined that 27% to 76% of the chance that one is gay is determined by DNA. The genetic influence appears to be greater for men than for women, according to the study.
Other stuff is probably happening in utero that influences one’s sexual orientation. As a review articlepublished last year in the journal Endocrinology explains, exposure to atypical levels of testosteroneand other steroids in the womb is probably responsible for some people being gay. Another review article, published last year in Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, makes the same point:
“The evidence supports a role for prenatal testosterone exposure in the development of sex-typed interests in childhood, as well as in sexual orientation in later life, at least for some individuals. It appears, however, that other factors, in addition to hormones, play an important role in determining sexual orientation. These factors have not been well-characterized, but possibilities include direct genetic effects, and effects of maternal factors during pregnancy.”
One of those prenatal influences may be the number of males who have previously inhabited the mother’s uterus. It may sound strange, but Canadian researchers have found that “having one or more older brothers boosts the likelihood of a boy growing up to be gay,” as I explained in a 2006 Los Angeles Times story. As I wrote at the time, “The so-called fraternal birth order effect is small: Each older brother increases the chances by 33%. Assuming the base rate of homosexuality among men is 2%, it would take 11 older brothers to give the next son about a 50-50 chance of being gay.” Those findings were reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In addition, my colleague Shari Roan wrote about a fascinating controversy surrounding treatment for a rare condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The disorder can cause girls to be born with genitals that look male, making it hard to tell the baby’s gender. One treatment is to give women hormones during subsequent pregnancies to reduce the risk for siblings. But doctors have found that this approach has an unusual side effect:
“The treatment might reduce the likelihood that a female with the condition will be homosexual,” Roan wrote. “Further, it seems to increase the chances that she will have what are considered more feminine behavioral traits.”
This is all just the tip of the iceberg. But the scientific consensus seems to be that there is indeed a biological basis for homosexuality – though it’s not necessarily 100% determined by either genes or by environmental factors.
