At the end of October, the clocks in the UK went back, from British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time) to Greenwich Mean Time. The mornings are lighter as a result, yes, but by about 4:30 in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to switching on the lamps in the sitting room and lighting a cosy fire.
I’ve been on something of a health kick of late, but I try to ensure I get any outdoor exercise during daylight hours. You can wrap up well against the weather, after all.
Darkness is another matter.
As a child, I always suffered from a bit too much imagination when it came to being happy in the dark. And now, living out in the wilds with nary a sniff of a streetlamp, walking home from a late winter event in the village can still be an unnerving experience. Things scutter about in the verges as I walk past, or take flight out of the branches overhead. I’ve encountered owls, hares, and badgers, as well as sheep and cattle on both sides of the hedgerows.
But one thing I have not yet encountered is other humans.
The chances are, around here, if I meet someone else in the lanes then I probably recognise and know them. But for millions of women, living in cities, that’s not the case when they’re out, alone, at night. And so, despite the constant message that exercise is as beneficial for our mental health as it is for our physical well-being, taking up regular outdoor exercise at this time of year can be the proverbial double-edged sword.
Upping Your Winter Vitamin D
If you work in an office, then getting out, even for a short period at lunchtime, when at least it’s light, can do you the world of good. It also enables you to absorb a bit more of the Vitamin D we’re all lacking here in the UK between October and March. In fact, I use the alteration of the clocks as a reminder to double up on my Vitamin D supplement.
The easiest way to up your daily step count and get some fresh air is either to take up regular walking or running. During lockdown, it seemed that everyone I knew was taking up the Couch-to-5k challenge. Personally, I prefer to cycle rather than run, which feels kinder on the joints.
I think this is because I’ve never been much of a runner. For one thing, I’m incredibly slow, which is possibly why I learned so much self-defence – you have to stand and fight when running away with any kind of alacrity is not really an option.
And, I confess, that having learned how to protect myself does give me the confidence to go out alone in the dark, although I would never dream of doing so with earbuds in.
It’s rather a shame that we don’t hear more news items about lone women who have successfully fought off a would-be mugger or rapist, rather than those who tragically did not succeed. It all feeds into the frightened mindset that somehow it cannot be done.
Trust me – it can.
I didn’t create the character of self-defence instructor turned close-protection expert, Charlie Fox, as some kind of unrealistic superhero. She’s simply strong, determined, tuned in to her surroundings, and very well trained. And she knows how to turn almost any everyday object into a weapon, from a tube of lip balm to a rolled-up magazine.
Barrier to Running
I read a fascinating article in The Guardian recently, written by former gold medal-winning cyclist Chris Boardman. In it, he explained that he’d been trying for some time to persuade his wife to take up running. He had not realised why she was so reluctant until she finally told him her real reason for not doing so at this time of year – she simply did not feel safe.
Boardman raises the statistic that one in five women is worried about sexual harassment while out exercising, and three in ten have endured it first-hand. If I’m walking along a street at night, I don’t feel comfortable if a man is walking behind me. I will cross to the other side of the road, or stop, put my back to the wall, and pretend to be answering a text while I wait for him to go past. (I would always stop and turn my back to the wall to genuinely answer a text, rather than keep walking without being aware of my surroundings.)
Boardman’s article asks why women have to be so hyper-vigilant, when the cause of their anxiety is the male half of the population. He highlights Sports England’s This Girl Can campaign, which encourages women to take up a form of empowering exercise. They have also written some guidelines for men to help them seem less of a threat.
Because I’m sure anyone reading this is no genuine threat to a lone woman – you’re all far too nice a crowd for that. But if you’re out exercising and you come upon a woman doing the same, have you thought that you might unwittingly cause her some anxiety, just by your presence?
If you’re closing on her, slow down, or cross the road in order to overtake, rather than gaining on her and then passing close. Boardman also quotes the advice not to make comments, even if you think you’re being complimentary. Say nothing unless you get a greeting first. Then simply return it and keep going.
No consolation
There has been a whole spate, in recent years, of female victims who were murdered while out running, and whose attackers were brought to justice due to data from fitness trackers. Either their own or those being used by their killer.
Somehow, I don’t find that information very comforting, do you?
This week’s Word of the Week is accismus, from the Greek akkismos meaning coy or demure. It means a deliberate and feigned lack of interest in something which one secretly desires. It was described as both a vice and a virtue in the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1823.
(This week’s episode of THE BODY IN THE WELL BESIDE ME was preempted by the stunning overturns at the SCOTUS. The series will return in 2 weeks).
America’s chilling retreat to the past
Woman during the Victorian era (Image: DowntownLALife*)
Assault on Women: how the Supreme Court joined in
In a 5-4 decision on June 24 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that permitted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. The regressive decision was courtesy of far-right Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Cavanaugh, all of whom during their confirmation hearings expressed in one way or another that Roe v. Wade was precedent they would not overrule.
Birth control: as old as history
To understand why this reversal of Roe is so appalling, we need to get reasonably familiar with history’s timeline of birth control. Genesis 38:8-9 tells the story of Onan, who spilled his semen on the ground to avoid impregnating his brother’s wife, a contraceptive maneuver commonly known as coitus interruptus.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322) may have been the first to propose using natural chemicals such as cedar oil, lead ointment or frankincense oil as spermicides.
In his memoirs, Casanova (1725-1798) describes his experimental forms of birth control using the empty rind of half a lemon as a primitive cervical cap.
In 1827, scientists had a major breakthrough as they discovered the existence of the human ovum (egg). Prior to that, scientists had only known that sperm must enter the female body for pregnancy to occur.
The Comstock Laws
Anthony Comstock was head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, established in 1872 and financed by several wealthy philanthropists. Comstock used the funds to lobby the New York Legislature and Congress for laws against adultery, premarital sex, and other so-called vices. His lobbying worked, and on March 2, 1873, Congress passed the Constock Law, an anti-obscenity act that designated contraceptives as obscene material and outlaws the dissemination of them via the postal service or interstate commerce.
Sanger and McCormick
The story of Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick is long and somewhat involved, but are summarized here with the highlights, for brevity’s sake.
Margaret Sanger, was a New York City nurse who, in 1912, wished there was a “magic pill” to prevent pregnancy.
She ran afoul of the Comstock Laws with the June 1914 issue of her then-radical journal, The Woman Rebel, where she penned the term “birth control."
Two years after fleeing to England, Sanger returned to New York where authorities dropped her charges. She opened the country’s first birth control clinic, which was promptly raided.
In 1917, Sanger met Katharine McCormick, a wealthy woman who began to support Sanger’s cause.
In the case of People [of New York] v. Margaret Sanger, Judge Frederick Crane ruled that physicians could supply contraceptive materials to married couples, but upheld Sanger’s conviction, as she was not a physician.
At 72 years old, Sanger met Professor Gregory Pincus who claimed to have suppressed ovulation in rabbits using the hormone progesterone. Sanger convinced him to collaborate with her to develop the “magic pill."
McCormick personally funded what became The Pill Project.
Whereas some sang Margaret Sanger’s praises for her work on birth control, she was also connected to the eugenics movement and the elimination of the “dysgenic horror story” of blacks who reproduced “carelessly and disastrously.” In 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed Margaret Sanger’s name from their Manhattan office.
Plaque marking previous location of Margaret Sanger’s clinic (Image: Warren Eisenberg/Shutterstock)
In the 1950s, although the majority of physicians approved of birth control, anti-contraception laws in effect in thirty states still prohibited or restricted the sale and advertisement of contraceptive devices. In Massachusetts, it was a crime to "exhibit, sell, prescribe, provide, or give out information" about contraception. In Connecticut, it was a crime for a couple to use contraception.
In 1954, Harvard professor and hormone expert Gregory Pincus, whom Sanger had met at a dinner party and persuaded to help create the “magic pill," joined forces with Harvard obstetrician-gynecologist John Rock, who had long been interested in birth control and fertility problems, and together they began the first human trials on a progesterone pill in fifty women. Not a single subject ovulated while on the drug. The new “Pill,” called Enovid by the Searle drug company, began spreading to the general public and drug companies. The FDA approved of Enovid for therapeutic purposes in 1959, and after a trial on 897 women, Searle applied to the FDA to approve use of the drug for contraception. In 1960, that’s exactly what happened.
In 1965, Estelle Griswold, director of the Connecticut Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Lee Buxton, chair of the Ob-Gyn Department at Yale Medical School, were arrested in Connecticut for opening four Planned Parenthood clinics. The case went all the way to SCOTUS, and in 1965, the landmark decision of Griswold v. Connecticut overturned the Comstock Law, finding it unconstitutional to restrict access to birth control, because it interfered with a person’s right to privacy.
The Pill: A blessing or another assault on women?
At a time when women’s consciousness was giving rise to feminism and the women’s liberation movement (derisively called “women’s lib”) in the 1960s, the contraceptive pill gave women a new financial independence and/or the ability to join the work force. On the face of it, the Pill and the women’s movement might have seemed a perfect fit. But there are two sides to the Pill, as it were. Its history is laden with the damage and danger it exposed women to--most prominently blood clots, thrombophlebitis, and pulmonary embolism. For a long time, neither drug companies nor physicians informed their female patients of this major, potentially lethal health hazard. Women who complained of such symptoms as depression, headaches, and muscle cramps while on the contraceptive pill were dismissed out of hand by mostly male doctors. In effect, what was a savior from pregnancy for some, became a medical and physical assault on women for others.
During the 1970 hearings on the birth control pill, not a single woman was present on Senator Gaylord Nelson’s panel, leading to vocal protests during the hearing from women in the audience who were part of the collective DC Women’s Liberation. Their question was: Why were we not told of all these dangers? What resulted from their persistence was a package insert along with the birth control pill warning about the blood clot risk.
Roe v. Wade
In 1970, 22-year-old Norma McCovey (1947-2017), who became known as “Jane Roe” to protect her identity, sued District Attorney of Dallas County, Texas, for enforcing a state law that prohibited abortion except to save the pregnant woman’s life. Roe claimed the Texas law violated her constitutional right to personal privacy. The question before the court was this: Does the US Constitution recognize a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion? The 7-2 opinion found an absolute right to abortion during the first trimester. At the time, abortion was legal in four states and restricted in sixteen. The ruling nullified abortion bans in the remaining thirty states.
In the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that a Pennsylvania law requiring spousal awareness prior to obtaining an abortion was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it created an undue burden on married women seeking an abortion. The basic framework of Roe was left intact, but the chipping away at it by pro-life activists never ceased. Too many people took Roe for granted and failed to see the ground eroding at their feet. Along came June 24, 2022. Using the decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that sided with Dobbs’s denial of abortion beyond fifteen weeks, SCOTUS held that both Roe and Casey had been wrongly decided, and that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. In one fell swoop, they erased an almost 50-year-old law.
Anti-abortion activists square off against pro-choice demonstrators in front of Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Clinic, Manhattan
Male supremacists get their long-awaited assault on women
There is white supremacy, but there is also male supremacy. Together, they are a deadly combination, and they are, to a varying extent, likely operant here. Male supremacy is an ideology advocating the rigid gender roles, and subjugation of women. Reversal of Roe is a male-supremacist move. The idea is to diminish women by showing contempt and removing their once-established right to terminate their own pregnancies.
Pro-life activists are also looking to ban the "morning-after pill,” e.g. Plan B, on the claim that it prevents the embryo from implanting itself in the uterus. This is an outright falsehood. The medication is not an abortifacient. It prevents ovulation and therefore fertilization.
Why is this happening now?
The stars have aligned in a way perfect for the two main types of supremacy to drag the country back to an earlier time--perhaps back to the Comstock Laws?--and inflict maximum possible damage on the lives of women. Don’t worry that there are also many pro-life women--they are not coming from the same place as men, even if they seem to be.
Between 2016 and 2021, the culmination of several events spawned the backlash from white and male supremacists. The Black Lives Matter movement, started in 2013, came into prominence, especially after the murder of George Floyd. The #MeToo movement became red-hot headlines around 2017. Men--some very powerful men, all of whom proved to be cowards--were vilified, and rightfully so, for assaulting and raping women. Then came Covid, a time of uncertainty, intractable division, and frustration. Quarantining at home is a good way for a male supremacist to become progressively angrier. When #45 lost the election, this ire came to boiling point and the male supremacists redirected their fury at their favorite target--women. And up there on the Supreme Court, the male and white supremacists were exactly where and when they were needed.
