by JAVSimson | Aug 30, 2014 | On Being a Woman | 2 Comments
Not only is contraception good for women’s health, it is good for the health of a society, for the well-being of all its citizens. Humans are social animals and smooth social functioning requires social structures and behavioral specialization, particularly...
by JAVSimson | Jul 9, 2014 | On Being a Woman | 8 Comments
The debate over contraception and abortion has raged around moral issues such as whether or not destruction of a conceptus (a fertilized ovum) is equivalent to destruction of a human life, and whether or not the use of contraception promotes promiscuity in women. I...
by JAVSimson | Jul 8, 2014 | Body Wisdom | 0 Comments
[Forgive me; I’m returning to this blog after a long absence caused by work on other projects, including a book that has come out recently.] Healing from everyday cellular damage happens within the membrane surrounding each individual cell of the body, with the...
by JAVSimson | May 12, 2014 | On Being a Woman | 19 Comments
About a month ago, I agreed to participate in a blog hop focusing on the Writing Process. For those (few?) of you who haven’t participated in a blog hop, it goes something like this. One person writes a blog on a designated topic and, in the writing, links back to...
by JAVSimson | Mar 4, 2014 | On Being a Woman | 10 Comments
This was my response to the blog on gender differences in brain wiring introduced in the last post. I read your rant with a sinking heart, in part because I can understand where you’re coming from. I understand the annoyance and pain of feeling once more...
by JAVSimson | Feb 26, 2014 | On Being a Woman | 9 Comments
A few days ago I came across a blog by a woman who is clearly intelligent and is a feminist in the best sense, but she seems to be resistant to the idea that men and women may be different in their minds as well as their bodies. ...
by JAVSimson | Nov 9, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 5 Comments
This is the final installment of a set of meditations that began here/. There was a time, when I was much younger, that I resented my mother a bit for not teaching me the rules about how to be a girl. I had to learn all that stuff all by myself—from books and...
by JAVSimson | Oct 22, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 4 Comments
This series of blog posts began here/: So what are some of the consequences of the images and roles that women learn to appropriate, and what kinds of conflicts and losses are thereby created for a woman herself, for her family, and for society as a whole? For the...
by JAVSimson | Aug 25, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 0 Comments
This is the second post in this series. The first can be found here. So what is it that mothers teach their daughters about who they are and how their lives should be led? I realize I’m generalizing when I make the following observations, and there are certainly...
by JAVSimson | Jun 8, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 6 Comments
[The following is a transcription of a lay sermon delivered at the Unitarian Church in Charleston, SC on February 22, 1976. This was during the height of state efforts to ratify the ERA, and I was actively in support of it. (...
by JAVSimson | May 26, 2013 | Body Wisdom | 4 Comments
For many years, stem cells have been suggested as the ideal vehicle for mending or replacing tissues damaged by disease. Experimentation has been severely hampered by technological problems in producing and obtaining genetically compatible stem cells. In addition,...
by JAVSimson | May 26, 2013 | Science and Spirit | 4 Comments
Two or three months ago, a question was asked on a forum that I track intermittently. It was from a student taking a biology course who was surprised by the amount of controversy elicited on the subject of stem cells. (Wait until he gets to evolution!) He wanted some...
by JAVSimson | Mar 19, 2013 | Body Wisdom | 3 Comments
Perhaps the most amazing feature of living beings (organisms) is that they are often able to repair injuries inflicted by the environment. That’s lucky for us, because our bodies sustain a lot of damage as we move through life, and the body needs to last a...
by JAVSimson | Mar 14, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 1 Comment
Congress finally passed (or should I say, reaffirmed) the Violence Against Women Act. Apparently, what was holding up the legislation was the issue of Native American women. Do the federal government and its law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction on autonomous...
by JAVSimson | Jan 26, 2013 | Body Wisdom, On Being a Woman | 4 Comments
This is the continuation and final installment of the previous blog on human development and who should determine whether or not that process is interrupted. Below is an image of the developmental stages to date from http://embryo.soad.umich.edu/ Following two months...
by JAVSimson | Jan 25, 2013 | Body Wisdom | 0 Comments
The body is an almost miraculous, self-healing being, and if cared for properly, it will usually last for a good, long lifetime. If you have survived the ills of childhood and have reached the age of 25 without incurring serious, long-term illnesses, your body is...
by JAVSimson | Jan 21, 2013 | On Being a Woman | 4 Comments
Yesterday, I responded to a blog post on “Why Men Can Speak on Abortion.” with: “This article is simply a rehashing of age-old arguments about why males should control women and their bodies. The fetus is part of a woman’s body until it’s born.” I received a couple of...
by JAVSimson | Jan 8, 2013 | Science and Spirit | 5 Comments
The songs we sing help build our souls. The soul can be thought of as the bedrock sense of self, the way we see our own being and its place in the Universe. Soul, the sense of self, ultimately informs our personal values. It directs behavior toward others and to the...