Quickies: Patriarchy, the silencing machine
Rape victims paying for their own exams and what the measles epidemic says about the US
In Patriarchy, no one can hear you scream – Rebecca Solnit (author of Men Explain Things to Me) on the Jeffrey Epstein case and the culture of silencing. “Now it seems exhaustingly obvious that what’s happening to refugees, to the climate and the biosphere, to the poor under hypercapitalism, is a vicious disregard for their rights and humanity, and that some of the men perpetrating public brutality are monstrous in private is a given. Monsters rule over us, on behalf of monsters.”
Rape survivors are being billed for forensic medical exams – “Despite state and federal laws, many people who were raped wind up paying for some medical services out of pocket, even if they have insurance. An analysis of billing records from 1,355 insured female rape survivors found that in 2013 they paid an average $948 out of pocket for prescription drugs and hospital inpatient or outpatient services during the first 30 days after the assault.”
What the measles epidemic really says about America – “By vaccinating their own children, and thus ensuring that they don’t spread the disease, parents contribute to the “herd immunity” that protects the vulnerable. But this requires thinking more about the collective and less about one’s own child. And this mentality is growing rarer in an era of what Reich calls “individualist parenting,” in which well-off parents spend “immense time and energy strategizing how to keep their children healthy while often ignoring the larger, harder-to-solve questions around them.””
