Search Results for: City Journal

Putin’s Rasputin

St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square; Moscow, Russia. (Rickson Liebano/Getty)

Amos Barshad | An excerpt adapted from No One Man Should Have All That Power: How Rasputins Manipulate the World | Harry N. Abrams | 17 minutes (4,490 words)

 

In the lobby of a heavy-stone building in central Moscow, I’m greeted by a friendly young woman in a pantsuit who, she explains, is working “in the field of geopolitics.” She takes me to the security desk, where my passport is carefully, minutely inspected before I’m granted access. As we head upstairs the woman slowly whispers a joke: “This is what will save us from the terrorists.”

We walk down a long, high hallway that looks or bare or unfinished or forgotten, like maybe someone was planning on shutting down this wing of the office but never got around to it. There are linoleum floors, cracking and peeling, and bits of mismatched tile in the style of sixties Americana. Rank-and-file office clerks shuffle through, and no one pays attention to a faint buzzing emanating from somewhere near.

We stop in front of a heavy wooden door. Inside is Aleksandr Dugin.

The man is an ideologue with a convoluted, bizarre, unsettling worldview. He believes the world is divided into two spheres of influence — sea powers, which he calls Eternal Carthage, and land powers, which he calls Eternal Rome. He believes it has always been so. Today, those spheres are represented by America, the Carthage, and Russia, the Rome. He believes that Carthage and Rome are locked in a forever war that will only end with the destruction of one or the other. Read more…

Bivalves of the Heart

During my first trip to Seattle, everyone told my parents and I to eat at Ivar’s. When we did, this beloved local seafood chain served us wild salmon cooked on a native cedar wood plank, and the the Pacific Northwest stole more of my Arizona heart. The Ivar’s water glass featured an Indigenous salmon design, so I shoved the glass in my hoody pocket and took it home to the desert I was now planning to escape for the PNW. The salmon, like the restaurant, was the most Pacific Northwest thing I could cling to besides memories. I drank from that glass during the six years it took me to finish college before moving to Oregon.

For Eater, Northwestern and journalist Tove Danovich explores her own intimate relationship with Ivar’s to tell the chain’s history and examine its enduring allure to locals and tourists. Founded in the 1930s, Ivar’s now has a total of 23 little seafood bars and sit-down restaurants around the state. Founder Ivar Haglund pulled all sorts of cheeky gimmicks to get publicity, from advertising clam broth as an aphrodisiac to describing the freeway above his “Ivar’s Acres of Clams” restaurant as “Acres of Parking.” As with so many beloved chains, the appeal is as much about flavor as it is the role the place played in our lives.

Hanging onto a relationship with [my step-father] has sometimes felt precarious, a loose knot that I don’t want to test by pulling too tightly. I’ve never visited both him and my mom in one trip, even when they both lived in Seattle. I knew I’d feel guilty for taking time away from one by visiting the other. And when they lived so close, going to Seattle without seeing both of them felt like a snub, too. So instead, I didn’t go at all — not to Seattle, and not back to Whidbey Island, either.

An assignment to report a story about Ivar’s seemed like an excuse to see them both. Sure, I could have woken up early, driven to Seattle, eaten my fill of fish and chowder, and been back to Portland before bedtime. But instead I made a week out of it. I asked my mom if I could visit her on Whidbey after I stopped for a meal at the Mukilteo Ivar’s. Then I asked my stepdad if I could stay with him in Seattle while I visited Ivar’s on the waterfront. Of course, he said, anytime.

When I arrived, he seemed glad to see me even though lately I’ve noticed there’s often been a month or more between our phone calls. Am I overstaying my welcome by not doing my reporting then heading out the door? I offer to meet him for lunch at Ivar’s but he doesn’t eat much meat or dairy anymore and he has to work. “I understand,” I say. I’m surprised by my disappointment. I join the gulls at the Ivar’s Pier 54 seafood bar, a party of one.

Read the story

My Unsexual Revolution

Illustration by Chloe Cushman

Diane Shipley | Longreads | July 2019 | 17 minutes (4,293 words)

In November 1998, I had sex for the first and last time. I was 19, my boyfriend was 21, and we’d been together for 10 months, long-distance. I was at university in Lancaster, a small town in the north west of England, and he lived in Essex, in the south east. I had a week off from classes, so I spent six hours taking two trains to stay in the sporadically-tidied house he shared with friends from work. On Wednesday morning, I walked to the pharmacy down the street to buy condoms and KY Jelly, shaking slightly as I handed over the cash. That night, with Ally McBeal on TV in the background, we lay on his narrow twin bed, kissing and touching each other before we slipped under the covers. I worried it might hurt, or feel awkward, or be over quickly, but it was great. Afterward, we ate chocolates, drank Coke, and swore we’d have sex all the time from then on.

We tried. Later that night; the next day; a couple of months later, on vacation in Florida. Each time, it was as if my vagina had snapped shut and no matter how hard he pushed or how vividly I pictured a tulip’s petals unfurling, nothing could convince it to open. Eventually, we gave up and went back to the heavy petting and blowjobs we’d each enjoyed, respectively, before. We were best friends, we were in love, we both had orgasms. In theory, I knew that penis-in-vagina intercourse wasn’t the only way to define sex. But it seemed like the most important, and I felt like a failure for not being a “proper” girlfriend; for being unfuckable.
Read more…

Live Through This: Courtney Love at 55

Mick Hudson / Getty, istock / Getty Images Plus, Michael Ochs Archive / Getty, Vinnie Zuffante / Getty, pidjoe / Getty, Illustration by Homestead

Lisa Whittington-Hill | Longreads | July 9th, 2019 | 24 minutes (6,539 words)

It’s hard to tell whether Thurston Moore is being sarcastic or sincere. It’s probably a bit of both. “The biggest star in this room is Courtney Love,” says the Sonic Youth singer and guitarist in a scene from 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The documentary follows Sonic Youth’s summer 1991 European tour and features performances and backstage antics from their tourmates, including a pre-Nevermind Nirvana, Babes in Toyland, and Dinosaur Jr.

Moore comments during an interview with 120 Minutes, an MTV program that spotlighted alternative music in the days before the music channel became the home of teen moms and spoiled Laguna Beach brats. As Moore declares his love of English food to the host — most definitely sarcasm — Love is behind him trying to get the camera’s attention. She waves and appears to stand on something to make herself taller. Her efforts pay off and soon she is in front of the host, all brazen, blond, and sporting blue baby doll barrettes.

Tongue-in-cheek or not, Moore was right. Love’s band Hole wasn’t on the European tour bill that summer and their debut album Pretty on the Inside hadn’t even been released yet, but Love was already on MTV.

Read more…

The Burdens We Carry

Illustration by Homestead

Amy Scheiner | Longreads | July 2019 | 11 minutes (2,695 words)

My mother died carrying water.

She was hauling a 24-pack of Poland Spring to bring to my brother’s new dorm room. She was proud of him because he was finally moving out. She had struggled to raise two children who had themselves struggled immensely along the way. My mother was tireless, indestructible, “high energy” as she described herself, but lately she had seemed worn to me. Aside from a high-powered law career, she spent the last few decades caring for her husband and her children, the community, her grandmother, and her mother. When I learned about God as a child, I remember thinking: He had nothing on Mom.

***

Read more…

The Sorrowful Mysteries, or Reasons I’m No Longer Catholic

Kathleen McKitty Harris | Longreads | June 2019 | 10 minutes (2,618 words)

I am in kindergarten and I am kneeling on the seat of my desk chair. So are all of my Catholic school classmates. We are 4 and 5 and 6, and we stare at the crucifix hanging on the wall while our knees burn from the pain of prolonged contact and pressure against the blond, lacquered wood. Our teacher, Miss Judy — who, my father says, is a dead ringer for Jane Russell — knots silk scarves at the hollow of her neck and wears Candie’s sandals that thwack against the soles of her feet while she walks. While we kneel, she talks about the drunk driver who killed her sister many years ago, and says we need to pray for her sister’s departed soul. We don’t pray for the driver. I think, My father smells like whisky when he drives. My father has crashed a car. My father is going to Hell.

Read more…

No One Knows Why Gunshots Are Terrorizing the Malibu Mountains

AP Photo/John Antczak

In 2018, Tristan Beaudette was fatally shot while sleeping in a tent with his daughters in a scenic campground. Police and California state park officials had ample evidence that something nefarious was happening in this rugged part of southern California before Beaudette’s death, and they kept quiet. Rumors filled the vacuum, and theories circulated. Was Beaudette’s death premeditated, random, or was it connected to an armed survivalist who was blamed for the string of fatalities and bizarre shootings that plagued the area? At GQ, Zach Baron tells how this terrifying constellation of random unsolved violence has cast a shadow over the Agoura Hills/Calabasas area.

There is reason to suspect the area is still very dangerous. Local news outlets report that sheriff’s deputies have responded nine different times to claims of gunfire in the area. In September several Caltrans employees who are working on Calabasas Road, a few miles from the campground, discover the skeletal remains of what the coroner ultimately determines was a man; investigators can make out no further identification. One journalist in Malibu, Cece Woods, begins writing on her website The Local Malibu, accusing the LASD of orchestrating a cover-up related to the rash of shootings in the area in order to protect its reputation. “The city of Malibu never put out a public safety announcement, and I believe it’s because they don’t want to make the sheriffs look bad,” Woods tells the Hollywood Reporter. In the fall, in an unusually close runoff, the incumbent sheriff is defeated in an election that turns partially on the department’s handling of the case.

Meanwhile, there is someone, or multiple people, in the hills around Malibu Creek State Park, breaking into unoccupied buildings, stealing food and other supplies. In late July, the Agoura Hills/Calabasas Community Center is burglarized; in September, it’s a commercial building owned by the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. In October, Spectrum Development, an engineering consultancy, reports a third break-in: Surveillance footage from the site shows a man stealing food while carrying a rifle and wearing what sheriff’s deputies call “tactical gear.” The next day, residents report an ominous massing of SWAT vehicles, patrol cars, and other tactical units near the Spectrum Development offices. The manhunt, which begins at rush hour, lasts through most of the day, but the suspect is not found. That night, residents report again hearing gunfire.

Two days later, the Water District building reports a second break-in on its property; two days after that, a maintenance worker is driving through a park about a mile south of the Malibu Creek State Park campground when he meets a man who asks him for a ride out of the canyon. The park worker, noting the man’s resemblance to the suspect in the prior burglaries, refuses; instead he drives off and calls the sheriff’s department, prompting the second massive manhunt in the area in one week. Three helicopters hover over the park for most of the day, before darkness falls and the manhunt is called off.

Read the story

If I Made $4 a Word, This Article Would Be Worth $10,000

Illustration by Homestead

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | June 2019 |  10 minutes ( 2,574 words)

What in the actual fuck. I thought journalists, even just culture journalists, were supposed to be brave. I thought they were supposed to risk their lives, even just psychologically. I thought they were supposed to shout and swear and beat their breasts — fuck everything else. At the very least I thought they were supposed to tell the truth. If any of that’s true, I don’t know what the hell all the people around me are doing. All the people who, I’ve been told again and again, don’t want to bite the hand that feeds, even though the food is shit and the hand is an asshole. I’m ashamed that I was tricked into believing they were better than so many of the people they report on, that their conspicuous support for unions and an industry full of undervalued workers was anything more than a performance. I didn’t think journalists, even just culture journalists, were supposed to be cowards. 

***

If you don’t know who Taffy Brodesser-Akner is, you are very likely not on Media Twitter and I salute you. At one point, Brodesser-Akner was invariably described as one of the busiest freelancers in America and you really did see her byline everywhere. Five years ago, she found her niche writing celebrity profiles for GQ and The New York Times, for which she won three New York Press Club awards. Journalists adore her not only for her prowess at cutting down the various gods we love and hate in equal measure, but also for her ability to lure the reader into being her coconspirator by nimbly threading herself through each story. Because of that, and because of the reach of the publications themselves, and — perhaps most importantly — because of her popularity among her peers, her articles almost always go viral. In 2017, Brodesser-Akner became a staff writer at the Times and this month she is promoting her first novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble

On June 14, Cosmopolitan published one of roughly 5 million interviews with the debut novelist, this one by Jen Ortiz. I was scrolling through Twitter on a break from writing back-to-back columns and noticed the usual gushing posts by journalists with blue checkmarks next to their names. Those tweets are no real indication the person has actually read the interview they’re sharing, but whatever, because, like, it’s Taffy, you know her! Who doesn’t stan her!?! It’s funny, if you search the article URL in Twitter, initially it’s just tweet after tweet of outsize praise — “I loved this profile of the master profiler” — then, like a sudden stop sign on a 90 mph expressway, there it is: “what in the actual fuck.” That one’s mine.

I’d read the article. I’d seen one of those first tweets and, like I always do, I’d read it for the holy grail every author is looking for: the secret to writing a successful book without wanting to papercut yourself to death with it. “I’m actually the second writer Cosmo has sent,” Ortiz noted, but for some reason her employer still made the mistake of sending someone who had worked with the subject at GQ. Or maybe that’s not a mistake. I don’t actually read Cosmo, and I suppose I should have before I announced with bravado the death of the puff piece last May. Either way, there I was, reading merrily along, then suddenly, like that tweet, I stopped. It was just a line, a line in a small, kind of out-of-place paragraph: “When I started doing the ‘I don’t get out of bed for less than $4 a word’ thing, people started paying me $4 a word.” What in the actual fuck. 

This is what it meant when I posted that quote and those words: It meant, what in the actual fuck.

It meant what fucking other freelancers in the world are making $4 a word right now. It meant what fucking magazines in the world are paying $4 a word right now. It meant what fucking lies is this industry telling us when so many people — people in actual war zones — only dream of making 50¢ a word. It meant in what fucking world can a freelancer treat $4 a word like it’s not near-impossible for the rest of us. The meaning was so obvious that I honestly didn’t think anyone would even notice the message. But they did. And they mistook it for something I didn’t mean at all: “Fuck Taffy.”

The reaction was swift and violent, and, from what I could tell, divided into those who could read (predominantly marginalized writers) and those who could not (predominantly nonmarginalized writers). My point was being illustrated in real time by the journalism industry’s 1 Percent, the mostly white legacy media reflexively rallying around one of their own — T!A!F!F!Y!! Their aggressive cheers distracting from the faceless, nameless collection of freelance writers who were not there to fight, but to have a conversation about parity — about equity — the way the original tweet was intended. These were the freelancers who, like me, had worked their asses off for years and watched disconcertingly as the better their work got, the less it seemed to get them. Unable to make a living, a number of them quit. (Blame Longreads for my recalcitrance.) Like me, they were told it wasn’t personal, but I can’t think of anything more personal than choosing to hand one person a feast while everyone else gets the scraps. Obviously journalism isn’t uniquely inequitable, but it’s particularly egregious for an industry built on telling the truth to do the complete opposite when it comes to its own mechanics. Journalists intent on exposing everyone else refuse to interrogate themselves, relegating most intel to subtweets or DMs, if it’s online at all.

This is the problem with my tweet, or, why it caused such a fuss. For one thing, I’ll cop to not being very diplomatic. In retrospect, “what in the actual fuck” is not the best way to start a conversation about pay disparity, but if we’re being honest, it’s still probably the best way to get it noticed. For another thing, I was calling out an individual who is beloved by the journalism community. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t taking issue with her personally (quid pro quo), that I was highlighting her comment as an example of a systemic issue, that it was the system I had a problem with — nope, nope, nope. What mattered was that in an industry in which it is frowned upon to even side-eye your colleagues in public, I put the word “fuck” within the vicinity of a marquee writer’s name. And I was a nobody. Which is why it became Taffy and her allies versus “the freelancers.” The dominant side had a face, the other side did not. The star reporter once again came out on top, buoyed by a nebulous mass of forgettable freelancers.

Her supporters were loud as fuck, but when you actually looked at what they were saying it literally boiled down to: Taffy Brodesser-Akner is astronomically talented, which is why she is making astronomically more than you, who are not talented, and how dare you say women should be transparent about money then punish her for doing just that, have you even seen how much men make? I mean, what in the actual fuck are you talking about? This is not about one woman. It’s not even about gender equality (for once). It’s about exploitation. For all I care, Taffy Brodesser-Akner could be Michael Lewis with his $10 a word. The point is the same either way — it’s one journalist making several (many several) times what the rest of us do in an industry in which we’re constantly being told there is nothing left to give. Clearly there is, it just happens to be reserved for an exclusive group of self-congratulatory writers and editors benefiting from a corrupt system. And if you dare point out the unfairness of their profit, the whole lot becomes reflexively defensive, distracting from the real issue because it’s their loss and everyone else’s gain if it’s ever addressed. So let’s just attribute $4 a word to a woman achieving against all odds — yaaass, queen!— and move on.

Uhm, okay, but if $4 a word makes you a queen, does that make the rest of us serfs? And why are the serfs mostly, like, LGBTQ writers, people of color, and women in independent publishing? Distressingly, some women seem to have bought into the idea that they make a lot less than certain writers because they are way less talented and hardworking, but I’m finding it hard to believe that so many marginalized writers are less talented and hardworking than so many white people. Am I suggesting the system might be rigged in favor of upwardly mobile white journalists in the vicinity of New York and their upwardly mobile white friends in the vicinity of New York who run the industry? (Could this explain why the Times reviewed its own staff writer’s book and interviewed her on top of that?) Possibly? Maybe? No? Come on! We’ve been banging on about intersectionality and privilege for the past 100 years (it feels like). Has none of that penetrated? Because if one more person suggests that maybe I should just ask for $4 next time, as though I’m not already risking assignments every time I beg for 50 cents, as though organizations aren’t systematically standing in the way of the ability to negotiate, I swear … Just take one look at that clause Vox has been slipping into their contracts, the one preventing freelancers from sharing their rates publicly in order to get better (read: fair) ones. Are you really going to argue that a system that situates the Taffys — and sure, the Michael Lewises — of the world above the rest of us, apart from us, making wads more cash for their “talent and hard work,” is in any way ethical?

I mean, you could just say nothing, which a lot of journalists did. Writers I’d been cordial with unfollowed me. Writers I thought were actual friends said nothing, which I took to be complicity with the elite journalists, whose ranks they were one day hoping to join, or maybe who they were just trying not to piss off. Writers I hung out with weren’t even sure I wasn’t just being a dick. The ones who supported me, who even DM’d me, were overwhelmingly women of color, queer women, and women who had been serially underrecognized, not to mention a couple of guys who’ve been pushed past the point of giving a fuck. On their timelines, a number of the women indicated that everything that needed to be said about the elites could be found in their mischaracterizations of the $4 a word conversation. That these women predominantly used subtweets to make that point publicly implies that, as mad as they were, they were also aware that those same elites still controlled their livelihoods. The irony is that the same people who accused me of being anti-feminist for trying to talk about pay gaps (yes, that’s as stupid as it sounds), were all over Jezebel’sThe Lie of Feminist Meritocracy.” It’s an instance of bold-faced hypocrisy I can only explain by the fact that the piece was written generally enough that they could revert to performative protest without threatening their own position in line for the brass ring.

“Hey I’ve been working all day and off Twitter. Did I miss anything?” Taffy tweeted jokingly the day after the Twitter shitstorm rolled in. A few days later, in an interview with BuzzFeed’s morning show, she called it a disservice to pay transparency, before refocusing the conversation on her emotional support network of defenders. “I had the warmest kindest weekend on Twitter, where I found out that all these people admired me and liked me. I was like, ‘I love Twitter,’” she said, concluding, “It was a really great moment for me.” The coup de grace came right at the end, when she mentioned that at the time it all went down, she’d been lonely and in a terrible hotel in Atlantic City writing a terrible story: “That could be why I get $4 a word.” Oh, girl. There are journalists actually putting their lives on the line for a shot at $1 a word, maybe, if they’re lucky. Christ. I mean, you could say I’ve got sour grapes or envy or jealousy or, I don’t know, a hysterical obsession … with … what? Basic human decency? I can’t imagine how many marginalized journalists seethed at the idea that innate ability and a little elbow grease were the reason a select few journalists made several times more than their pittance. Where was the acknowledgment that those same people were almost always friends with the gatekeepers, that those gatekeepers almost exclusively share their friends’ work, which gets them more work, which leads to better work, which gets them book deals, which leads to higher salaries, ad infinitum?

***

Taffy and I kind of came up as freelancers around the same time — we were friendly if not actually friends. Dying to do work like hers, I emailed her in 2014 and asked for advice. I explained that, despite all my efforts, I hadn’t gotten anywhere near the kinds of bylines she had and I was still struggling financially. She was generous. She mentioned being relentless and lunching with editors. So I tried harder. I even lunched with a few people. Two years later, I received an email from her out of the blue. Bright Wall/Dark Room had just published my essay on the two sides of Christian Slater. I had pitched the profile months earlier in March, but it had been turned down by a number of publications, including GQ and the Times (Taffy freelanced for both at the time). BuzzFeed had offered me $400 for 3,000 words but I said no. By the time June rolled around, even that option had passed me by, but I really wanted to write the piece so I pitched BW/DR and I took $100 for it. I asked for more, but being such a small outlet they honestly didn’t have the money. So, yeah: $100 for 3,000 words. That’s $.03 a word. I figured I wouldn’t be granted an interview with Slater, who I had followed for three decades, and for such a small fee I didn’t bother going to the trouble. But I researched to make up for it and wrote the profile anyway, partly while juggling a holiday in Tobermory — I remember everyone going out to the water while I edited in a slice of sun in the cottage. The piece went up July 11th. Taffy emailed me a day later to congratulate me — she had just gone to proof at GQ on what she described as an identical piece. She regretted coming second. That is to say, I literally had Taffy herself telling me that I had beaten her at her own game, despite playing with less. Of course, she was probably paid a little more than $100. In fact, if she was already making $4 a word at the time, that would have amounted to $17,000 — 170 times my fee. As I was saying, what in the actual fuck.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

The Shames of Men

Getty, Illustration by Homestead

Don Kulick | Longreads | June 2019 | 14 minutes (3,788 words)

A few months ago, in April 2019, an eyebrow-raising headline appeared in the British newspaper the Guardian: “Botched penis enlargements: Papua New Guinea doctors warn of nationwide problem.”

The article reported that over the past two years the General Hospital in the country’s capital city, Port Moresby, has treated more than five hundred men who injected baby oil and other foreign substances into their penises to make them bigger. The medical professionals who sounded the alarm about this practice warned that it seems to be widespread and is a growing threat to men’s health throughout the country.

I read this story and sighed. I knew that those doctors were glimpsing only the tip of a ghastly iceberg.

*

Only a few weeks before the Guardian article appeared, I had returned to Gapun, a remote village in an all-but-forgotten corner of Papua New Guinea where I have been doing anthropological research for the past thirty years. The village is much further off the beaten path than any doctor working at Port Moresby General Hospital is likely to have traveled. Getting there from the nearest town can take two days, but this time I made it in a record fourteen hours.

Leaving from the nearest town with my traveling companions — three health workers from a local NGO — I rode in the back of a truck with no shock absorbers on an unpaved road cratered with potholes. For nine hours. At the end of the road we climbed into a flimsy outboard motor-powered canoe, bobbing on ocean waves up the coast before entering an immense mangrove lagoon and, after three hours, arriving at the end of a shallow, narrow creek. From there, we shouldered our bags and trekked for an hour, through viscous mud and clouds of mosquitoes, across slim slippery waterlogged poles that villagers call “bridges.”

Finally we arrived in the small windless slit in the rainforest that is Gapun; a village with a usual population of about two hundred people. Read more…

Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women

Illustration by Homestead

Caroline Criado Perez | An excerpt adapted from Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men | Harry N. Abrams | 22 minutes (5,929 words)

In the 1983 film Yentl, Barbra Streisand plays a young Jewish woman in Poland who pretends to be a man in order to receive an education. The film’s premise has made its way into medical lore as “Yentl syndrome,” which describes the phenomenon whereby women are misdiagnosed and poorly treated unless their symptoms or diseases conform to that of men. Sometimes, Yentl syndrome can prove fatal.

If I were to ask you to picture someone in the throes of a heart attack, you most likely would think of a man in his late middle age, possibly overweight, clutching at his heart in agony. That’s certainly what a Google image search offers up. You’re unlikely to think of a woman: heart disease is a male thing. But this stereotype is misleading. A recent analysis of data from 22 million people from North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia found that women from lower socio-economic backgrounds are 25% more likely to suffer a heart attack than men in the same income bracket.

Since 1989, cardiovascular disease has been the leading cause of death in US women and, following a heart attack, women are more likely to die than men. This disparity in deaths has been the case since 1984, and young women appear to be particularly at risk: in 2016 the British Medical Journal reported that young women were almost twice as likely as men to die in hospital. This may be in part because doctors aren’t spotting at-risk women: in 2016, the American Heart Association also raised concerns about a number of risk-prediction models “commonly used” in patients with acute coronary syndrome, because they were developed in patient populations that were at least two-thirds male. The performance of these risk-prediction models in women “is not well established.”

Common preventative methods may also not work as well in women. Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) has been found to be effective in preventing a first heart attack in men, but a 2005 paper found that it had a “nonsignificant” effect in women aged between forty-five and sixty-five. Prior to this study, the authors noted, there had been “few similar data in women.” A more recent study from 2011 found that not only was aspirin ineffective for women, it was potentially harmful “in the majority of patients.” Similarly, a 2015 study found that taking a low dose of aspirin every other day “is ineffective or harmful in the majority of women in primary prevention” of cancer or heart disease. Read more…