Is feminism more appealing to the masses when served with apple pie? Check out “Cooking With Feminists,” Stephen Colbert’s delicious segment with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who appeared during Colbert’s “Salute to the American Lady.”

Novelist Kiran Desai is, at age 35, the youngest woman to win Britain’s best-known literary award, the Man Booker Prize. She was honored this week for her second book, “The Inheritance of Loss.” “Ms. Desai’s mother, Anita Desai, has been a Booker finalist three times, but has not won. They are the first mother-daughter team of nominees in the prize’s 37-year history,” reports The New York Times.

There’s another Washington sex scandal — but this one involves abstinence, medical misinformation and millions of dollars in misspent funds.

“Diary of a Sex Slave,”, the San Francisco Chronicle’s four-part series on sex trafficking is more than just a news series; it’s a full multimedia report, with podcasts, slideshows and photos. Discover how the series was researched and reported, and when you’re done reading, share your opinion of the series.

“Bringing in the Bystander” is the hallmark of a new research center at the University of New Hampshire that focuses on preventing sexual violence on university campuses. The multidisciplinary center received funding from the U.S. Department of Justice; evaluation of the Bystander Intervention Program was funded by the National Institute of Justice.

Paws for a Cause — Chicago march raises awareness of the link between animal cruelty and domestic violence.

Not all terrorists make the news. Crash your car into a women’s health clinic and see if the media notices. In an op-ed published in Newsday, Jennifer Pozner writes:

On Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire. [...]

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women’s Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism – even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they’re fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

As long as anti-abortion advocates work to restrict women’s reproductive rights, the abortion debate will be omnipresent. But two recent arenas for the debate — one over the past, one very much in the present — add a new, disturbing twist to the conversation.

Anti-abortion advocates are going to great lengths to align the anti-choice movement with … feminism.

First, none other than Susan B. Anthony has become the center of a tug-of-war over the historical roots of the anti-choice movement. Feminists for Life has actually purchased Anthony’s birthplace in Adams, Mass., in an attempt to solidify their view that Anthony was strongly opposed to abortion. They have previously used her image in advertisements and on their homepage.

Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee, also uses her image and name to promote its work aimed at boosting anti-choice candidates, reports Women’s eNews.

Scholars, however, disagree with these groups’ interpretation of the historical evidence. Ann Gordon, a Rutgers professor and the editor of the “Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,” and Lynn Sherr, an ABC News correspondent who wrote “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words,” have both spent many years combing through Anthony’s writing and they both claim there is no solid evidence that reveals Anthony’s personal views on the issue.

Stacy Schiff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America,” observes in an op-ed in today’s New York Times that Anthony is hardly the first political figure to “experience a posthumous identity crisis.”

So long as we have written history we have rewritten it, seasoning it with bias, straining it of context, molding it to our agendas. (The French codified this problem years ago by throwing each camp a bone. For years it was understood that conservative historians got the ancien régime, the communists the Revolution, and the socialists everything thereafter.) But Anthony the pro-lifer hails from a different land, the treacherous province of cutting and pasting, of history plucked from both text and time. Now we are Photoshopping rather than airbrushing; with enough slicing and dicing, an argument can be made for anything. The doctorate in sophistry is optional.

[Carol Crossed, founder of the New York State chapter of Feminists for Life,] has argued that abortion rights are a violation of those for which Anthony fought. To her mind, the right to vote does not bring with it the right to destroy our offspring. This may be true. And then again it may not be. “We demand that woman shall be given the means to assert herself, regardless of whether she ever uses it or not,” pretty much qualified as Anthony’s theme song.

Rhetoric and symbolism, nevertheless, are powerful instruments. And this hasn’t been lost on anti-choice advocates working on the frontlines of local battles.

In South Dakota, they are attempting to preserve the toughest abortion ban in the nation, but Stephanie Simon reports on their unique tactics:

Antiabortion activists here deliberately avoid the familiar slogans of their movement. They don’t talk about the “murder of innocent babies” or quote the Bible on the sanctity of life. Instead, campaign manager Leslee Unruh has taken what she calls a feminist approach, arguing that legalized abortion exploits women and — for their sake — must be stopped.

The bumper stickers and T-shirts that fill campaign headquarters spell out her message, in pink and blue: “Abortion Hurts Women.”

“We women buy the choice line. We’re panicked, or we’re being pressured, or we’re ashamed to have a child outside marriage,” Unruh said. She speaks from personal experience; she had an abortion nearly 30 years ago and said her life since has been darkened with regret and longing. “If you don’t do your job right as a mother,” Unruh asked, “what good is everything else?”

After the ban passed this past February, Planned Parenthood decided to put it to a public referendum. But they and other pro-choice forces have been caught somewhat off-guard by the new strategy. Sarah Stoesz, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and North and South Dakota, admits, “Historically, this debate has been focused on fetal rights, fetal life. We have a lot of language about that. This adds an element we’re not accustomed to. It’s a different line of debate…. And that is something we struggle with politically.”

The focus has been on the draconian nature of the ban, not on a woman’s right to abortion. “This law simply goes too far,” reads a poster outside campaign headquarters of abortion-rights supporters.

Both NPR’s “All Things Considered” and PBS’ “Newhour with Jim Lehrer” have solid overviews of the campaign.

Every so often a discussion kicks up over whether men can be feminists or if men should call themselves “feminist allies” or “pro-feminist.”

For me, I’ve always considered the issue kind of a non-issue; I’m lucky to know guys who have considered themselves feminists longer than I have (relax: I wasn’t talking yet). They claim it because they support social, political and economic equality, period.

Then there’s Spain. “We have a prime minister who not only says he’s a feminist — he acts like a feminist,” María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Spain’s first vice president, told the Washington Post, referring to Prime Minister José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero. “In two-and-one-half years, we have done more than has ever been done in such a short time in Spain.”

Half of Zapatero’s cabinet members are women — the highest proportion in any government in Europe. From the WP:

New divorce laws not only make it easier for couples to split but stipulate that marital obligations require men to share the housework equally with their wives.

To draw more women into the armed forces, the government is shrinking the height requirements for women entering the National Guard and opening child-care centers on military bases.

Not even the royal family is immune: Zapatero wants to abolish the law giving male heirs first rights to the throne.

The push for gender equality in one of Europe’s most macho cultures comes as both internal and outside forces are creating seismic social shifts: Spanish women are taking greater control of their own lives by waiting longer to marry and having fewer children. The European Union is exerting more pressure on members to enforce equality. And the growth of high-tech businesses with a greater sensitivity to hiring women is expanding job opportunities.

After he was elected, Zapatero affirmed his commitment to feminist principles. “One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other,” he said. “We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation — but the most unjust domination is that of one-half of the human race over the other.”

Of course, not everyone is down with the program. “Just because Zapatero says by law men have to do dishes, men are not going to do dishes,” Alberto Fuertes, a 37-year-old factory owner, told the WP. “That’s ridiculous. It’s totally absurd.”

All of his 11 employees are women mostly between the ages of 46 and 55. “If I hire a 36-year-old, the problem is that she’s going to take a lot of days off to take her child to the doctor. She knows her rights and knows I can’t do anything about that,” Fuertes said.

He notes that his mother does everything for his father — but he doesn’t want that kind of life for his 2 1/2-year-old daughter. “I would not be happy,” Fuertes said. “It would go against everything I’ve tried to teach her.”

Back in the U.S., when was the last time you saw feminist in a headline — and it didn’t apply to a woman? “Educator, Integrationist, Feminist Dies in Port Washington”

The story, from Long Island’s local Northender, an online publication, is about the death of David Saltern, an educator who in the 1960s oversaw the desegregation of schools in New Rochelle, N.Y. In 1958, he appeared as an expert witness in federal court and argued for immediate school integration in Little Rock, Ark., which the school board at that time was fighting to delay for two and one-half years.

“When certain types of surgery have to be done, it should be done quickly,” he said, according to The Associated Press.

The Northender included this quote, which seems to be from an interview with Networking Magazine in 2002:

“Surrounded as I am – first by three sisters; later, daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters – I have always been an outspoken feminist – understandably so … the enormously powerful potential of women has not as yet been fully tapped in American industry, government and civic affairs. We have a long, long way to go.”

Saltern was influential enough that the New York Times also published a bylined obit (alas, with no mention of his feminist credentials).

Two representations of male feminists in the media in one week!

So, readers, if more men self-identify as feminists, will it have any impact on the number of women who claim, “I’m not a feminist, but …”?

From the LA Times, Maeve Reston writes:

Some prisoners held at the California Institution for Women in Corona failed to get basic health and dental care and told researchers they had often waited months to see a doctor or get their prescriptions filled, according to a study conducted by an advocacy group and the San Bernardino County Department of Health.

The inmates, interviewed in July and August of 2005, also told researchers they had often skipped visits to the prison doctor because of a $5 mandatory co-payment, which they say they cannot afford when they are making 28 to 30 cents an hour.

One woman said that there was no follow-up after she had surgery, and others reported they had never had a PAP smear, a standard test for cervical cancer.

The study, released Friday, was conducted by Kim Carter, who cycled in and out of prison 20 times before she got her life on track and became an advocate for women in prison.

Continue reading about the study here. (More information about women’s anti-prison activism is available here.)

The good news is the state prison healthcare system has already improved somewhat since Carter conducted the interviews for this study. Conditions were dire enough that a “U.S. district judge seized control of the state’s $1.2-billion prison healthcare system and transferred it to the jurisdiction of a federal receiver to improve conditions,” according to the LA Times.

Carter says she is heartened by the changes at the state level, but she’s still pushing for a more comprehensive approach to address the needs of women in prison as well as those who have been paroled. “Right now, nobody is doing anything…. This hasn’t been a priority for anyone,” Carter said. “People tend to only want to look at the prison system itself, when the prison system is just one piece.”

If you’re procrastinating working by blog surfing, stay an extra minute and test your menopause knowledge … Answers follow below, but no cheating!

A reader recently asked if I knew there was a category of bloggers called “elderbloggers.”

I had to confess that while I know bloggers come in all ages, I was unaware of the well-established elderblogger network of blogs. I’ve since added women who identify themselves as elderbloggers to the blogroll and will be including more. (Please send your blogroll suggestions — I’m open to considering anything, but keep in mind that feminist blogs that at least occasionally discuss women’s health issues are a particularly good match.)

But let’s highlight a couple here … Start your visit with Roni Bennett’s blog, Time Goes By. Benett, a former radio and television producer and the first managing editor of CBSNews.com, recently wrote about The New York Times series on the science of aging; ordering prescription drugs from Canada; and age bias in the television series starring Julia Louis Dryfus, “The Old Adventures of New Christine.”

Read her informative about page, from which this excerpt was taken:

One of the best parts of running Time Goes By is being part of a cultural phenomenon – blogging – discovering and promoting its particular benefits for elders. Blogging enhances critical and analytical thinking, increases access to quality information, and combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction. At a time in life, due to retirement from the workforce, children and grandchildren living in faraway places and friends dying, blogging creates a vital social network that is keeping more elders healthier and involved than they have ever had the opportunity to be.

You can also listen to Bennett discuss blogging at a 2005 BlogHer panel titled “How to Get Naked” — referring not to bloggers who undress for webcams but rather what it’s like to discuss personal/private issues in a public forum.

Bennett’s blog features a long list of male and female elderbloggers and some honorary elderbloggers who have not yet celebrated their 50th birthday. Bloggers of all ages are welcome to take part in the Elderblogger PhoneCon Oct. 24 — a chance to talk with other bloggers during a six-hour window. It may even include a few performances.

Another blog you should visit soon is A Little Red Hen, where Naomi Dagen Bloom writes about “peace, politics, yarnlife after 60.” Bloom’s posts often include lovely photos of her work or other art.

If it all sounds a bit too tame for you, well, know that Bloom is also a crafty composter, creator of Condom Amulets — cool handknit pouches for carrying condoms — and an activist who focuses on HIV awareness for women over age 50. Here’s the safe sex archive of entries.

“Feminism, women in community, concerned grandmothers. elderbloggers — whatever title you choose — we have many faces,” Bloom wrote this summer, channelling Emma Goldman. “We are shifting the universe.”

Want to help get “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson — and other essential books about girls by authors like Judy Blume and Jacqueline Woodson — into the hands of seventh- and eighth-graders? Check out this Donors Choose request from a New York City school teacher who is facilitating a book club for girls. Or consider helping to fund a book club like this in your neighborhood.

“Speak” was a National Book Award finalist. It often makes another notable list — books that are frequently challenged.

On Friday, Anderson posted on her blog about recent efforts to ban “Speak” and encouraged educators who have taught the book to share their experience. Classroom guides and resources are available on Anderson’s website.

Barbie wears a pink ribbon, too!

Five years after Barbara Enrenreich’s masterful critique of ultrafeminine breast cancer commercial culture ran in Harper’s Magazine, it’s the pinkest October ever.

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there are plenty of exciting ways to get with the cause, from freshening your breath with pink Tic Tacs to test driving a BMW.

Indeed, BMW will donate $1 for every mile to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (“Choose from the sporty 2006 3 Series or the luxurious 7 Series, or better yet take them both out for a thrilling test drive!”).

Or you can just stay home and click on pink text.

But there also seems to be an increased amount of discussion and scrutiny. Within the frame of Ehrenreich’s essay, Rebecca Traister looks at some items on the market this year, including Pink Ribbon Barbie.

“Check her out and tell me how many cancer patients battle their disease while decked out in a mermaid-style chiffon gown,” writes Traister. “And what is there to say about Barbie’s glossy, towering bouffant as an expression of cancer awareness? As the reader who passed this tip along wrote, ‘Does [this Barbie] perform a self-exam when you push a button on its back? Are the breasts and hair removable, to prepare them for future operations and let them know it’s okay?’”

Doubtful, seeing how Barbie gloves go up to her elbows.

Over at I Blame the Patriarchy, Twisty asks, “What will happen to global consumerism if breast cancer is ever really ‘cured’?” Twisty, who lets readers know she was diagnosed one year ago with stage 3 breast cancer, is digging into “Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy,” a new book by Susan King, associate professor of physical and health education and women’s studies at Queen’s University (Ontario):

Under the noble auspices of charity, argues King in Pink Ribbons Inc, global corporations, politicians, and regressive white middle class American ‘family values’ are all getting a big shot in the arm from the pink ribbon juggernaut. Corporations secure, with impunity, free publicity and a means to expand their market share via enlogoed ‘awareness’ campaigns. Politicians support virtually unopposable ‘bipartisan’ breast cancer funding initiatives as directed by behemoths like the massively influential and reactionary Komen Foundation and come out smelling like a rose. The rank and file, conditioned by now to believe that there’s no problem shopping can’t solve, are invited to feel virtuous and altruistic whenever they buy a Yoplait yogurt or a pink KitchenAid mixer.

But where’s the activism? The ostensible focus of all this pseudo-philanthropic pink jockeying is a kind of nebulous breast cancer ‘awareness’, rather than any serious effort at prevention or investigation into what actually causes breast cancer in the first place. Furthermore, once all this ‘awareness’ has produced, via mammography outreach programs or self-exam propaganda (both masquerading as ‘prevention’), a positive diagnosis, there’s not any great push to secure treatment for underserved women.

In other words, when you think of a breast cancer ‘survivor’, you don’t picture a poor black grandmother living in squalor without health insurance (and you certainly don’t imagine a woman who, because of sensible research efforts, never got cancer in the first place.) The Breast Cancer Brand woman is a pro-patriarchy white chick: middle-class, straight, virtuous, concerned with maintaining her femininity, and married with two above-average kids. Ordinarily she’d be content with her life as the unassuming, unpaid family caregiver, but she’s forced by circumstances to be plucky, brave, and heroic.

I’m ordering King’s book today. Here you can read an excerpt, or check out a Q&A with King.

In 2002, Ehrenreich gave a provocative keynote address (read | listen) at Breast Cancer Action’s annual town meeting, building off the Harper’s piece and arguing for a more legitimate and comprehensive response:

[We] don’t need to be infantilized when we’re dealing with a potentially fatal disease, we don’t need to be patronized with cosmetics and jewelry, and told to keep smiling, no matter what.

We don’t need more “awareness” of breast cancer—we’re VERY aware, thank you very much. We need treatments that work, and above all, we need to know the cause of this killer, so we can stop it before it attacks another generation.

And we certainly don’t need a breast cancer culture that, by downplaying the possible environmental causes of cancer, serves as an accomplice in global poisoning — normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience.

What we need is a truly sisterly response to this ghastly disease — one that is both loving and militant, courageous and caring, willing to confront the Cancer Industrial Complex and, when necessary, the entire $16 billion a year breast cancer industry, including the medical profession.

BCA is on it. BCA’s Think Before You Pink campaign, now in its fifth year, is emphasising the questions conscientious consumers should consider as they navigate the sea of pink ribbon promotions.

“Consumers deserve to know how — if at all — their pink ribbon purchases and participation in pink ribbon promotions will support ending the breast cancer epidemic,” said Barbara Brenner, executive director of BCA. “Companies with pink ribbon marketing campaigns need to be more transparent and accountable to people who buy their products.” Here’s one example:

To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?

If research, what kind? Is it the same type of studies we’ve been doing for decades that already gets enormous financial support, or is it innovative research into the causes of breast cancer that always struggles for funds?

If services, is it reaching the people who need it most? Campaigns that are not locally focused may siphon funds away from the community and give them to larger programs that are already well funded.

If advocacy and education, do the programs make steps towards ending the epidemic? Programs supporting “breast health awareness” ignore that we are already well aware that cancer is a problem and it’s time to move from awareness to action.

BCA is also gearing up for a new public education campaign this month that will focus on asking the hard questions about breast cancer that will in turn hopefully lead to better treatment. Consider supporting their efforts.

Then buy the KitchenAid mixer in whatever color you want.

Women Face Greatest Threat of Violence at Home, Study Finds: The International Herald Tribune reports on the results of a new study on violence against women published in the The Lancet, a British medical journal: “Violence against women by their live-in spouses or partners is a widespread phenomenon, both in the developed and developing world, as well as in rural and urban areas, the most comprehensive and scientific international study on the topic has confirmed. In interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries, researchers from the World Health Organization found that rates of partner violence ranged from a low of 15 percent in Yokohama, Japan, to a high of 71 percent in rural Ethiopia.”

Dangerous Trends, Innovative Responses: Women’s eNews is running an eight-part series around issues related to domestic violence. First up: “Hi-Tech Stalking Devices Extend Abusers Reach,” Marie Tessier’s story on a Seattle woman who was stalked by her estranged husband shows how controlling personalities can use cell phones, spyware and GPS technologies to terrorize their victims. Mary Kay provided grant funding for the series. Resources for women and reporters can be found here.

Counterfeit Drugs: Infected with Greed: “Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are flooding hospitals, Web sites, pharmacies and street markets around the world. Visibly indistinguishable from life-saving medicine, the pharmafakes plague the developing world, affecting millions of people and undermining confidence in public health,” writes Terry J. Allen in In These Times.

Jury Says Wyeth Drug Caused Breast Cancer: “A Philadelphia jury found Wednesday that Wyeth’s Prempro hormone-therapy drug was a significant cause of breast cancer in a 66-year-old woman and awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages. The verdict in state court, reached on the sixth day of jury deliberations, was Wyeth’s first loss in litigation involving about 5,000 lawsuits claiming that Prempro and a related drug caused breast cancer and other diseases. Many of the suits were prompted by government studies showing a link between the drugs and increased risk for the diseases.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation has published an updated fact sheet (PDF), “Sexual Health Statistics for Teenagers and Young Adults in the United States,” which covers a broad range of sexual health topics facing teens, including general sexual activity; sexual partners and relationships; sex, substance abuse and violence; pregnancy; contraception and protection; STDs; access to health care services; and communication. The last update was January 2005.

Perchlorate Linked to Thyroid Deficiency in Women: “Many women exposed to perchlorate, the rocket fuel chemical that has contaminated hundreds of Southern California water wells, have suppressed thyroid function, which can lead to health problems in them and abnormal brain development in their offspring, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Wednesday.”

Forget Pink, Think Red: Lucinda Marshall catches an advertising faux pas at Yahoo’s Breast Cancer Awareness page.

In some rural parts of China, local custom puts a high premium on marriage — even in death. “To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple,” writes Jim Yardley in The New York Times.

The family of the deceased will go to great lengths to find a female corpse, even paying the equivalent of $1,200, though the average farmer makes only about $300 per year. “Families of the bride regard the money as the dowry they would have received had death not intervened,” notes Yardley.

A woman’s family may also see it as a favor to their daughter:

Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Qinghua University in Beijing, an expert on folk traditions and burial customs in the Loess Plateau, said the minghun custom stemmed from both dread and sympathy for the dead. She said parents with dead daughters, like those with dead sons, were also carrying out an obligation to their child. They will sell their bodies as a way of finding them a place in a Chinese society where tradition dictates that a daughter has no place on her father’s family tree.

“China is a paternal clan culture,” said Professor Guo, who did postdoctoral work in anthropology at Harvard. “A woman does not belong to her parents. She must marry and have children of her own before she has a place among her husband’s lineage. A woman who dies unmarried has no place in this world.”

And no say about the afterlife, either.

Read the NYT article.

Monday’s massacre in Pennsylvania that left five school girls dead at the hand of neighbor whose plan apparently included sexual assault and torture — and the Colorado school shooting a week before in which one girl was killed and several more sexually assaulted — have sparked all the expected outrage and horror. And some conversational paralysis.

Echidne calls out the fact that these shootings received little attention as gender-based crimes, and she offers suggestions for how and where to start a much-needed dialogue:

I know that the individual murderers in these cases were mentally unstable, not normal. But most of us, the consumers of these news, are supposed to be fairly stable and capable of reasoned discussion on the issues. We don’t have to be protected from the astonishing finding that misogyny is rife in the society, and if by bringing the topic up we might make a few small changes here and there, who knows? A future victim or two could be saved.

By the small changes here and there I mean speaking out when a general discussion deteriorates into woman-bashing or girl-bashing, by not giving a sympathetic sounding board to a recently divorced and bitter man who blames all women for his misfortunes, but by pointing out to him that his anger is about one woman only, by making it very clear that generalized hatred of a whole gender is wrong and based on emotions rather than analysis. By standing up for girls when an internet chat discussion uses them as the example of everything cowardly, stupid and damp. By caring about hateful sexism as much as many of us care about hateful racism.

You don’t have to search far to find examples of hate — Jessica shares the dredges of her in-box, and Feministing readers, as usual, follow up with plenty of support along with discussions about subtle sexism and “masculine indifference”. Carrying on these conversations is essential, both within and outside of feminist spaces.

Plus: Check out the Eighth Carnival Against Sexual Violence over at Abyss2Hope (via Alas, a Blog).

It’s here! Our new book, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause, was officially released today! Here at the Our Bodies Ourselves office, we are busy organizing release party events across the country and responding to media requests for information about the book and the issues it covers. Right now a television crew from the “Today” show is in our office, shooting a spot that will air on NBC between 7-9 a.m. on October 14th.

Despite the national TV attention, we remain a tiny nonprofit that relies on volunteers to help spread the word about our work. In that spirit, we’re asking for your help.

What can you do? Here are a few ideas:

• Buy our great new book, for yourself, your family, and your friends.
• Blog about it.
• Write a note to your local paper, favorite listserv, or all your friends in your address book, telling them about the book and how to get it.
• Write a review of the book at Amazon.com or Powells.com
• If you live in the Boston area, come to our big Boston bash on Wed. Oct 18. It’ll be held at the YWCA in Boston (near Copley Square) at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public, so bring your friends! Or come to our reception during the American Public Health Association conference November 4 – 8 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
• If you live in other parts of the country, check our calendar for other events. Or organize one of your own!

Thanks for your help!

Despite all our medical and cultural advancements, menopause, possibly more than any other women’s health issue, is still surrounded by an aura of mystery and misunderstanding. It doesn’t have be — especially now that the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective has published Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause, their latest guide full of sound expert advice — both practical and political — and engaging stories from real women.

The book dispels the pervasive myths about women’s health over age 40 that still reside in our culture — and tackles “hot” topics from debates around female sexual “dysfunction” to the dangers and benefits of hormone treatment. It also offers practical tips to help cool down hot flashes, get a good night’s sleep, and cope with mood swings or changes in sexual desire if they arise. Other topics the books covers can be found on this handy factsheet, or check out the online excerpts. More to come from OBOS later today!

You’ve probably heard by now that Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and friends have launched GreenStone Media, a national radio network that broadcasts a variety of women’s talk shows. Meanwhile, in the UK, a radio program on women’s issues is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Over at the BBC, Martha Kearney writes about the history of “Woman’s Hour” — a program that when it first aired in 1946 was hosted by a man.

Kearney is the political editor of the BBC’s “Newsnight” and a “Woman’s Hour” host. The show often covers current political issues, such as the gender wage gap and violence against women in Afghanistan.

“Early items included ‘cooking with whalemeat’ (still a time of rationing), ‘I married a lion tamer’ and my favourite, ‘how to hang your husband’s suit.’ But some of the elements of the programme are the same today,” writes Kearney, explaining how fashion and cooking are still part of the mix.

“But Woman’s Hour in the early days wasn’t quite as cosy as you might think,” Kearney continues. “When the word “vagina” was used in 1946 in an item about women’s health, there was uproar and for decades the more decorous ‘birth canal’ was used instead.”

For those tired of the media asking, “Is there a future for feminism?” know that the question was raised on “Woman’s Hour” in 1948. Some talk-show topics, it seems, never go out of fashion.

Kearney notes that a program called “Woman’s Hour” would probably not be green-lighted today, “yet Woman’s Hour remains a successful part of the Radio 4 schedule and 40% of its audience are men.”

If a show called the “Women’s Hour” can almost the bridge the gender gap, who knows where GreenStone might lead.

Plus: If you’re looking for other UK media on feminist issues, I highly recommend The F-Word, a terrific online magaizne that “exists to help encourage a new sense of community among UK feminists, and to show the doubters that feminism still exists here, today, now – and is as relevant to the lives of the younger generation as it was to those in the 60s and 70s.”