It was a reasonable weekend for Capital Pride (weather-wise), and we had a lovely time here in our household. Our synagogue holds an annual Pride Shabbat service Friday evening to kick off the festivities, and you never know who’s going to show up to speak or deliver a reading, but it’s always inspiring and an excellent way to decompress after a long week. This year she said the blessing over the candles and did a reading about inclusion to begin the evening, which was perfection. We skipped the parade Saturday night (one of these years we’ll go, but it was threatening rain, so we didn’t chance it– instead we lived our best life by going to see Ocean’s 8 with our daughter), but made it to the festival yesterday, where we were joined by thousands of our closest, queerest friends and allies. Because it was a full weekend, I didn’t spend much time inside online, but last night over pints of Ben & Jerry’s it’s possible we surfed en famille for a bit. Here’s what caught my eye since last we spoke:

Sigh. Handmaid’s Tale looking more and more like a documentary these days

Not surprisingly, stigma is hurting our response to the opioid epidemic

If you interview with me someday, I promise I will ask you #19

In the wake of last week’s high profile suicides, many good pieces were written, but my favorites include:

Thinking about survivors

Bourdain and masculinity

Bourdain and the power of telling the truth

Raising sons in the #MeToo era

The NFL seems to be failing in the DV prevention arena

Oh yes, I’ve been there (and many of you have, too)

The upside of chronic anxiety

Well, here’s the thing–Friday was my birthday, and we are a family that does birthdays over an entire weekend. My folks came in, and my kiddo comes today, so I did a whole lot of play this weekend and not much in the way of work. Not really even much in the way of reading. But last night as I started to think about what this week brings (travel, projects, some house stuff, and then Pride), my brain kept me awake and I ended up perusing my social media feeds. So I managed to catch up a bit on what’s going on in the world–here’s what caught my eye since last we spoke:

“The persistence of racist medical beliefs, and their association with ongoing racial disparities in treatment and patient outcomes, represents a major challenge for 21st-century American medicine.” Believe it.

The NFL has a serious problem with its priorities

A glossary for the #metoo movement

One of the best takes on the Roseanne Barr garbage

Sports media doesn’t know what to do about sexual violence

This weekend’s long read (hello, Brock Turner)

Decades of doing this work made this story feel terribly familiar

This report (well, mostly the photos) pretty well gutted me

A look at the shifting death stats in the wake of Hurricane Maria

For those of you who are Alexa users…

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

I am actually hanging out in the mountains of West Virginia with wife and pup for the remainder of this holiday weekend, but I wanted to leave you with something that I found profoundly thought-provoking. Perhaps you’ve seen it–Abby Wambach’s commencement address at Barnard College last week. You can read the full text here, but if you have the opportunity, I recommend watching it, because I found it to be pretty aspirational:

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

You are missed–personally and professionally–every day.

1/23/69-5/23/16

Last week, Sasha and I were fortunate enough to have been invited to teach for several days on responses to gender-based violence for the US embassy in Ethiopia (Russ Strand was the 3rd member of our party, and taught on our day off). I spend a great deal of time traveling, both domestically and internationally, but this was my first time in Africa, and I went without any preconceived ideas about what we would experience. Although the trip was relatively brief (we spent only 4 days on the ground), I felt like I was able to see quite a bit of Addis Ababa. If you have any interest whatsoever, please keep reading. Otherwise, come back tomorrow for regular FHO programming.

1. Addis Ababa is more than 7700′ in elevation, making the weather in May relatively cool, dry and honestly, not what I expected. It was lovely, and Sasha and I spent each evening sitting outside having drinks or dinner at our hotel, which was a welcome respite from the general chaos of the city. Addis is crowded and sprawling–traffic is impressive and that’s coming from someone who lives in the city with some of the worst traffic in the US. The streets weren’t just crowded with cars, but with people, and without a clear sense of traffic laws or signals. By the time we got back each evening, the idea of venturing back out wasn’t particularly appealing, so adventures were saved for the couple of unscheduled days we had in the city, where both time and the ability to safely negotiate the regulated yellow cabs (as opposed to the unregulated blue cabs and vans, from which we were warned away) was simpler. Addis doesn’t have the kind of violent crime that many countries are known for, but muggings and pickpocket-type crimes are prevalent, and because of what we do for a living, we are probably more vigilant than most. So safety was always on our minds, and we moved around the city accordingly. Most ex-pats we met had stories of having their wallets lifted in some fashion or another, but thankfully we did not run into any issues.
2. The focus of the conference was on eradicating GBV in Ethiopia, but until we showed up on Day One, it wasn’t clear who our audience would be, or even what the true goal of the conference was, as it was the first time any embassy had hosted something like this. We went with the impression that our predominant audience would be embassy personnel (healthcare providers, security staff, etc.) with some local professionals also invited. In truth, there were very few embassy personnel and the audience was overwhelmingly local professionals. This made for incredibly rich discussion but required us to shift our plan for teaching on the fly. We had local law enforcement, prosecutors, physicians, victim advocates, UN personnel, and a variety of other individuals. Our sessions were simultaneously translated into Amharic, the local language, although the majority of participants also spoke English. We covered a pretty broad range of topics during the two days that Sasha and I taught, including female genital mutilation/cutting; identifying and addressing IPV in the healthcare setting; injury in sexual assault cases; strangulation assessment; and corroboration in sexual assault. I honestly don’t know how effective the lectures were, but the conversations they spurred felt incredibly valuable.
3. As is the case in the US, if you want to know the breadth of what is happening, ask the victim advocates. No one has a better sense of the realities for victims, and we saw this dynamic repeatedly during our time in Ethiopia. At one point I was having a discussion with the group about strangulation assessment and the physicians were politely listening, but they let me know that this wasn’t something they saw frequently in Ethiopia. The UN personnel mentioned that acid attacks were perhaps something that should garner greater attention than strangulation. But the victim advocates stepped in and made it clear that they heard about strangulation over and over again from victims, which surprised many in the room. That multidisciplinary conversation was impactful, and shared perspective made for some great dialogue during our time with the group. And the advocates, as we so often see in the US, seemed to have the fullest picture.
4. We met many, many remarkable professionals in our short time there, but none more so than Maria Munir, who started the first shelter for rape and domestic violence victims in Ethiopia. The things she has accomplished are impressive, and we were so privileged to see her work in action on our last day when we were invited to visit the shelter. We met (and danced) with many of the teens and preteens, were treated to a traditional coffee and sweet made by some of the residents and staff and received a tour of the facilities. If I had done nothing else, the trip would have been worth it for that visit alone. Their shelter educates the children who live there, provides skills training for the women before they leave to live independently (we received beautiful scarves made by them), provides a huge range of healthcare, including deliveries, for the residents, and has on-site counseling services, child care services and pretty much anything else you could imagine being offered by a small village of dedicated women. You can read more about Maria and her amazing work here.
5. To prepare for the trip we followed all recommended CDC guidelines for travel in Ethiopia (with the exception of malaria, because we were only in the city and it was still the dry season). That meant all the immunizations, water and food precautions, and traveling pharmacy for emergencies. Knock wood, we seem to have managed without major issues, so good guidance all the way around.
6. Many of you asked how public Sasha and I planned to be about our marital status. The answer is simple. Not public at all. We shared a hotel room, but we reverted back to our days living under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and while it felt lousy to proceed in that fashion, compromising our safety or freedom would most definitely have felt worse. The embassy organizer was aware of our marital status, we took our advice from him, it ended up being fine. Not ideal, but our reality for the week was tolerable. And I was reminded of just how lucky I am that I get to live freely most days of my life, with a family that looks like mine, and not get hassled a whole lot for it. So yeah, it was what needed to be done. It was fine. My heart aches for the hundreds of thousands of people in this world who are not free to love like I get to.
7. Sasha was a huge hit. Seriously, what did you expect?
8. We identified more commonalities, and many issues felt more familiar than I think we expected. For instance, Ethiopia has several existing or planned “one-stops”, hospitals that essentially mirror the family justice center model with multiple services under one roof. One of the lectures during the conference was from a physician from Gandhi Hospital, the site of a one-stop (Facebook page), and their services mirrored many of the ones we also offer (no DNA testing, though–only two private labs in the country have the capacity to analyze, and they are prohibitively expensive). As Sasha was talking with the group about prosecuting these cases, many of the frustrations in the room about challenges in taking cases successfully to trial were similar to challenges we face in the US every day–consent, coercion, culture. Familiar.
9. Shutting up and listening was the most effective thing I could do while I was there. And so I tried to do that as much as humanly possible. Our jobs were ultimately less about teaching and more about facilitating conversation and to that end, I hope we succeeded.

10. My intention is to stay connected to the remarkable people that I met there–to Maria and her great good works; the physicians who are seeing enormous patient loads because there are too few providers for the population; to the various other professionals who have already reached out for protocols or slides or additional resources. The trip wasn’t an easy one, but it was extraordinary, and I have never met, collectively, a more welcoming, generous, hospitable people than those I met in Ethiopia. We came home with some great stories, an obscene amount of coffee, and burning desire to figure out how we can keep supporting the work happening there. So very lucky to have been able to go.

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here. 

Friends, I am getting ready to embark on a really amazing professional adventure on Saturday, so it’ll be business as usual at FHO this week, and then it’ll be quiet here next week. I can’t share too many details until my return, but I will devote some real estate to the trip when I am back in the office. In the meantime, I have a new Articles of Note coming this week, and maybe another goodie or two. And of course, I was perusing the interwebs during quiet moments over the weekend; here’s what caught my eye since last we spoke:

Every Thing This Man Writes

A modicum of justice

How to complain so a partner will listen

Democrats aren’t the only women who care about #MeToo

Interesting op-ed about the loss of genetic privacy

In case you were hoping air travel could get worse

Consent is only one part of the conversation. Pleasure is another. 

And finally, this week is National Nurses Week –a very happy one to all my friends and colleagues!

Our first offering in the FHO store, Injury Following Consensual Sex is now available. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find it here.