Because of Hillary Clinton’s recent statement about the Ronald and Nancy Reagan and AIDS, just a small reminder that the Clinton administration, on behalf of the Pharmaceutical companies who made the “triple cocktail” (the first effective mix of medications designed to help HIV+ people), sued the countries of Brazil and South Africa for manufacturing it cheaply and distributing it for free.
The reason was so that the Pharmaceutical companies could charge $17,000 dollars per person per year for them instead. In addition, the Clinton threatened South Africa with trade sanctions for not complying. The Bush administration later also sued India for making their own version of the triple cocktail.
source: Dr. Croix Saffin, Queer Studies professor at Bellevue College
The state protects capital, not people.
Blog
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is this how lesbian sex works
we use CDs now
before too long we’re going to have to switch to something completely digital
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…hrm, what dish is this an ingredient for?
cutie-pie :3
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No we are not plotting anything. Why do you think we are plotting something?
For the record, I was lying. We were plotting something.
It’s a year after Terry’s death.
The thing we were or were not plotting is coming on apace.
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“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.
See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.
Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.
To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.
You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.
reblogging for commentary
But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too.
First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation.
And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.
Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.
If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other.
When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.”
And that is gross.
Mic dropped.
Also, let’s talk consent 101: consenting to one thing does not mean I am automatically consenting to something else.
If I consent to kiss someone, I am not automatically consenting to having sex with them. Hell, if I consented to have sex with someone one way, it doesn’t mean I am automatically consenting to doing it in a different. If I consent to having intercourse, I am not by default consenting to getting pregnant and giving birth.
*applause*
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An adult English coonhound runs like a deer. An adult fantasy author (or at least this one) runs like a wombat who desperately wishes she was wearing a sports bra. I can sling mulch for hours, I can dig holes for days, but running is a different specialization.
(Seriously, the dog is about the only thing that could cause me to run these days. I am DONE with running. If a serial killer comes after me, I’ll demand to see his weapon. Anything less than an axe, I’ll just take the hit.)
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…hrm, what dish is this an ingredient for?
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Of course we did.
So, we went to look at property yesterday. 5 viewings, scattered across the Oly area. There was the first plot that was wet and surprisingly noisy, the second plot that was wet and had a home that needed pulling down and you’d have to build right on the road, the fourth plot which has utilities in the road and a channel prepped to bring in the utility cables and is in a nice area with a pretty view (clearly the sensible choice), the fifth plot which has river frontage and a cute (possibly salvagable) 100 year old cabin on the lot…and an easy level building area.
So which one are we both desperately resisting being excited by?
The third one. The impossible to access one, which currently has no access road, on the top of a ridge, with basalt rock underneath. It has a well that’s roughly 150’* vertically down from the potential home site, which is currently covered in a semi-demolished-rotten-unpermitted cabin. The only building on site is an 8×12′ ‘cabin’ which currently has no floor. We’re unclear if the well is even permitted and might be within a wetland protection boundary. Half of the land is unbuildable due to power lines, but that’s fine, because the other half is where we’d want to be.
The only teensy problem is getting there. Oh, and owning an EV? We’re going to have put in some kind of emergency charging point at the bottom of the hill, because the 150′ steep climb at the end is probably not ideal if it’s nearly flat.
Anyhow, masochistic tendencies aside, we’ve got two possible sites of interest, but it must be said the one we’re most excited about is improbably challenging.
ETA* It may be ~80′, actually. It’s tricky to decide exactly where it, and the contours for what we’re planning to build lie.
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No Más Bebés: New PBS Documentary Reveals Population Control Of “Poor Who Cannot Adequately Feed Or Clothe The Children They Already Have”
Mothers like Consuelo Hermosillo were in labor when medical staff urged signed consent for a “life saving” treatment. Unbeknown to the mothers, doctors performed a tubal ligation, by clamping, cutting or burning of the fallopian tubes without disclosing the exact procedure.
this is a great documentary
oh my god i forgot about this documentary for a sec
Omfg how fucking out of order
ONE OF MY PROFESSORS MADE THIS DOCUMENTARY
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Doctors are ‘failing to spot Asperger’s in girls’
Doctors are ‘failing to spot Asperger’s in girls’
Expert says many more girls have autism than was thought, and failure to diagnose them can lead to misery
So, basically, what this article is saying is they discovered the way that boys present with autism, went “well that covers 100% of the population surely!” and then didn’t bother figuring out how autism presents in girls.
Girls slip through the diagnostic net, said Attwood, because they are so good at camouflaging or masking their symptoms. “Boys tend to externalise their problems, while girls learn that, if they’re good, their differences will not be noticed,” he said. “Boys go into attack mode when frustrated, while girls suffer in silence and become passive-aggressive. Girls learn to appease and apologise. They learn to observe people from a distance and imitate them. It is only if you look closely and ask the right questions, you see the terror in their eyes and see that their reactions are a learnt script.”
WOW.
Tony Attwood, founder of the first diagnostic and treatment clinic for children and adults with Asperger’s, and author of The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, agreed with Gould’s estimation of a 2.5:1 ratio of boys to girls. “The bottom line is that we understand far too little about girls with ASDs because we diagnose autism based on a male conceptualisation of the condition. We need a complete paradigm shift,” he said.
WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO DIAGNOSE BOYS AND BECAUSE WE FIGURED THAT WOULD WORK FOR EVERYONE BECAUSE BOYS AND GIRLS ARE SO EXACTLY THE SAME (child psychology would DISAGREE WITH YOU IDIOTS) NOW WE’RE REAL SURPRISED THAT WE FUCKED UP.
This. This is a feminist issue. This is an issue like holy shit there are doctors out there who will deny a female patient who is referred to them because ‘lul girls don’t get austism’. They didn’t think to do any more research because, whatever right? We figured out how to solve the male side of the problem.
This is so wrong on so many levels.
relatedly, tony attwood is kind of a dick
And it’s not just an issue of “how it presents” in boys vs girls.
Think about it:
A boy is quiet, unsociable, and fixated on a topic that interests him but might be considered unusual. He walks on his toes. He refuses to eat anything but Kix cereal and saltines. He can’t keep a grip on the monkeybars on the playground. Parents will notice. He isn’t “behaving right”, boys are supposed to be outgoing, right? Loud and rambunctious? Interested in everything around them? Eat any food put in front of them? Athletic and strong?
Now think of a girl in the same situation. She walks on her toes- how cute she must be imitating mommy’s high heels, or the ballerina in her favorite movie she watches all day every day without end. She’s quiet. “Wow, so fortunate your little girl is so well behaved, not a brat like my daughter!” She refuses to eat anything but Kix cereal and saltines? She’s just being fussy. Girls are always fussy, didn’t you know? She can’t do math? It’s okay. Girls are bad at math. Right? She can’t keep a grip on the monkeybars but obviously it’s just because girls aren’t good at sports.
My point being, parents not noticing a girl’s Autism is deeply rooted in sexism. And it’s bullshit. Even today my mom acts like there’s “no way” I could be autistic even though my brother (diagnosed at 9yrs when I was 5) and I presented THE EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS!!! FOR OUR ENTIRE CHILDHOOD!!! AND WE STILL DO!!!! My brother got every bit of aid available at the time, IEPs in school, special arrangements at home for his sensory difficulties. You know what I got? I got told to stop being a picky little bitch. To suck it up. Because I’m a girl.
Reblogging again for the important commentary.
@penicillium-pusher
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