Off the top of my head (read: with nothing to cite) I wholeheartedly agree.

It's also convenient that breast cancer advocacy ties into all of these assumptions about femininity, womanhood, identity, beauty, strength, sisterhood, blah blah blah... Where's that sort of thing for prostate cancer? Or colon cancer, which is more prevalent (and more deadly) but waaaaaay less glamorous?

Incidentally, my favorite cancer fundraiser is "Bowlin' for Colons."

The other thing that I hate is when people talk about a "cure for cancer." That's so ludicrously broad. Cancer can be caused by genetics, exposure, behavior or nothing at all. It can be prevented in some cases and not in others; it can be treated and sent into near-permanent remission in some cases and is quickly fatal in others. There's no such thing as all-encompassing "cancer." It's a crapload of very different diseases all bound together by the fact that they manifest themselves as a bunch of wonky cells clumped together.

Most people don't think about the charity much after choosing to donate, and pinkwashing sucks in a lot of survivors. It's really massive and doesn't surprise me at all. Never liked that shade of pink and know survivors that find it demeaning. I don't know where the money should go. Read a really great article a while ago in the New Yorker about how useless mammograms are, as they are so hard to read. All rats end up ridden with tumors if they live long enough.
More research, I'm all for research and research is expensive. But charities end up being machines that support themselves. Investigate, expose, inform. Do what you can, I'd be happy to hear it.
I'm lucky enough for it not to be a chief concern.

One other organization that has really turned me off on this front is the National MS Society. Which is a shame, because the whole reason I got involved was because of a friend who had MS (a rather weird situation: mid-20s black guy) and had received assistance.

We went on an MS Walk where it was obvious that the organizers hadn't walked the course themselves. Our friend had broken his ankle (unrelated to his new diagnosis), so we wheeled him around in a wheelchair, and it was fricking hard to go DOWN the hills, let alone up them. If three able-bodied adults had trouble helping him over wonky curb cuts, how about the people with more advanced mobility issues -- like, say, the hundreds of people with MS who were there that day?

But the real thing that turned me off was the absolute barrage of mail that I started getting after I turned in my pledge sheet. I got paper mailings every week that had nothing to do with my local chapter or my donation. I balked at the sheer expense of the fancy mail pieces themselves, let alone the cost of mailing everything out over and over again.

I got so ticked off that they were spending so much money on this crap that I have refused to donate ever since.

Much like Madamina the relentless blizzard of self marketing and the sharing of my info for marketing of other like charities has turned me off more than on group. Then there are groups that fund support or research but make it crazy hard to figure out where the money goes.

I definitely think there's an industry and that pinkwashing is a problem.

There was also a recent study showing that associating pink with breast cancer *reduces* the likelihood of people taking preventative action against it because they don't connect with it as a serious concern.

And the whole "Save the tatas" campaign shit pisses me off, since it prioritizes cleavage over women-as-people and, I think, adds to the breasts=one's-worth-as-a-woman pressure that's a large part of what makes breast cancer so emotionally difficult in the first place.

There are some good sites on where the money goes. I check Charity Navigator, for one, before I donate anything.

But overall I think that fundraising for various cancers has done a heck of a lot of good. For example, it's incredible how much the funds raised by the Leukemia and Lymphoma foundation has done for research which has led directly to impressive improvements in survival rates for many kinds of blood cancers.

I think there's a lot of truth to this and it's one reason I despise cause marketing. My cousin, who recently died of cancer, had done a lot of research on the topic and talked about how even the component of donations that goes to what is termed 'research' is going to major pharmaceutical companies who are working hard to develop cancer treatments - proprietary ones - for profit. They want to be first out of the gate and they'll be asking for premium (non-generic) reimbursements for healthcare companies. This isn't "research" as most of us think of it - advancing knowledge in the public domain for the common good - it's product research and market research.

It's true that a lot of the major organizations are more interested in talking about a "Cure" (read: paid drugs/treatments) as opposed to talking about prevention, systemic issues, public health risks, individual risk factors, etc. There are some pretty strong links between a lot of chemicals (BPAs being one that shows up repeatedly) and breast cancers. I understand being skeptical about the vague "chemicals" accusation, and yet it stands to reason that not all industrial chemicals, which we are absolutely swimming in, are innocuous.

IT's worth taking the entire cancer complex with a grain of salt. There's a ton of BS about there and a lot of money and players involved.