Link Love

Couple steals immigrant’s child, declares “Finders, keepers!”*

But in any event, if you want somebody else’s kid it’s a good idea to maintain possession.  That way, you can claim that it isn’t in the child’s best interest to be taken away from the only home he knows.  Like when kids grow up in orphanages, that’s the only life they’ve known.

And of course it isn’t in a child’s best interest to take him out of an English-speaking household and place him in a Spanish-speaking household.  Because it’s too traumatic.  So people should never be allowed to move to other countries.  And children should not be adopted by parents who don’t speak their birth language.

*They didn’t actually say that. But that’s what the defense boils down to.

I Am HIV Positive and I Don’t Blame Anybody – Including Myself:

It is irresponsible to just tell people to use condoms without acknowledging that conditions like poverty, patriarchy and homophobia play roles in the so-called risks we all take. Even with people who have seemingly escaped these broader contexts—say, a working-middle class white man such as myself—stigma can prevail. Stigma that is produced by homophobia and general ignorance, yes, but also by American society’s desperate need to discipline and punish, to affix blame on individuals rather than confront the systems in which individuals live. So the AIDS epidemic becomes a challenge of personal responsibility rather than a damning indictment of global public health. That personal responsibility, however, is tricky: I bore no responsibility for the epidemic, until I had HIV, when it became entirely my problem.

Abagond describes The Teflon Theory of American History:

The Teflon Theory of American History says that anything that took place over 30 years ago is Ancient History. It has Absolutely No Effect on the present. Or not much. Unless it was something good like the light bulb or the Declaration of Independence. Therefore those who make a big deal of the bad stuff in the past, like slavery, are Living in the Past and need to Get Over It.

Link Love: Trans* Health Care, Bisexuality, and Forced Sterilization

Spread the love, ya’ll.

New Report Shows Trans* People Experience Huge Gaps in Health Care Access (emphasis below is mine):

…the final bullet bears special mention, in light of the recent media attention on the high suicide rate for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth that has almost entirely ignored the suicide epidemic among trans* youth. An attempted suicide rate over 25 times higher than the general population is profoundly distressing, and points rather strongly to systemic discrimination harassment, and huge gaps in health care, including mental health care.

Bisexuality, Binarism, And Why Everyone Has It Wrong:

What happens is, instead of recognizing that biphobia is actually a form of monosexism and bisexuality one simple form of polysexuality, bisexuality replaces polysexuality as the label for non monosexual orientations and biphobia is equated to polysexuality. This erasure is destructive to these other sexualities and centers bisexuality as the only polysexual option beyond pansexuality (which many bisexuals even approach in a bigoted fashion) which creates binarism within bisexuality.

So people on both of the major sides of this debate on bisexuality and binarism are both engaging in binarism, cissexism, erasure and are just flat out wrong. Bisexuality doesn’t enforce the binary and cissexism, the erasing way it is used to mean polysexual, the way essentialism is spilled into it and the way it is policed to only be about men and women does.

Report Shows HIV-positive Women in Chile Forcibly Sterilized, Denied Medical Treatment:

During the first trimester of her pregnancy, Julia began experiencing an orange-colored vaginal discharge. Concerned, she went to the hospital to have it checked out. Instead of treating her, however, hospital workers turned her away and told her to return for her regularly scheduled check-up. She was admitted to the hospital three days later, hemorrhaging and with severe abdominal pain, but she still sat untreated while the hospital staff attended all the HIV-negative patients first, including those who arrived after Julia. Her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage shortly thereafter, and a paramedic told her, “‘It is because God knows, because you were going to have a sick child.’”

Link Love: Breastfeeding Awareness

August, in addition to being an important time for my family, is also the US National Breastfeeding Awareness Month, and this first week (August 1-7) is World Breastfeeding Week. Naturally, as an aspiring IBCLC, I’m stoked! I’ll be posting about breastfeeding throughout the month. To kick off, here is some link love for, by, and about breastfeeding parents and babies:

Kellymom has been an incredible resource for me throughout my breastfeeding relationship with my daughter. There is a treasure of information regarding breastfeeding and how to maintain a healthy nursing relationship with your child. Every concern I ever had about nursing was answered in some way on Kellymom.com.

Ameda is holding a video contest for breastfeeding moms. Each video entry earns a donation of $5 to the Human Milk Banking Association of America and an entry to win a $2500 nursery makeover. Each tweet or comment entry earns a donation of $1. You can apparently enter once every day for the length of the contest, which runs until September 15th.

Get involved! Check to see if there are any Breastfeeding Awareness events going on in your state.

Link Love: Abagond

Did you know that there was a statue of an old black man bowing and tipping his hat in passive subservience erected in Natchitoches, Louisiana for the purpose of “grateful recognition of the arduous and faithful services of the good darkies of Louisiana”?

Yeah, me neither. To learn a little bit of history about it and to see a photo of the statue (which is exactly as bad as it sounds), check out Uncle Jack the Good Darky by Abagond. I just discovered this blog and it is filled with fascinating articles about black history and anti-racism.

I also recommend The Space Traders, Malcolm X: On Afro-American History, David Myers: a black boy who thought he was white, and Do whites have a culture? just for starters. Seriously, there is enough good stuff here to keep my mind and eyes busy for months!

Link Self-Love

Today I’d like to highlight some of my favorite entries. I noticed while looking at my stats that for some inexplicable reason my entry Raising a Woman of Color, Part IV: Intelligence is by far my most popular post, with more than 3 times the amount of page views as my second most popular post. This is actually kind of bothersome to me since it’s not my personal favorite, mostly because I feel that it is unfinished. I rushed the end because I was tired and had been working on it for what seemed like all day, and I was eager to just wrap it up; someday I do intend to write a follow-up in order to further explore how the ranking of intelligence is racialized in an oppressive context.

I want to highlight On Identity and Telling the Truth, which I wrote while reflecting on the meme of trans folks as deceivers. All of my posts in the Raising a Woman of Color series have been quite popular with the exception of the first, which has received only a fraction of the attention that the others have. In My Lorde!, I expressed my delight in discovering the wondrous prose of Audre Lorde, whose writings have only affirmed why I left feminism for womanism.

I have to admit that I am curious. Which of my posts are your favorites, and why?

Link Love: Objectification, Intent, and Writing About Africa

I’ve been meaning to start making regular posts in which I link to posts that have really made me think for a while now. Better late than never, so here goes!

amandaw from Feminists with Disabilities explains how Feminism Objectifies Women:

“The assumption, when this person says “we have to be able to make some sort of systemic analysis and that will mean some choices have to be wrong” they are almost always assuming some specific things.

* Women have been historically locked in their homes tending their houses and families, and larger society pushes against women’s ability to participate in the workforce, and women should participate in the workforce at the highest level possible.

* Women are oversexualized, and that sexualization takes specific forms, such as high heels, lipstick, makeup, dresses.

* Women are stereotyped as demure and submissive, soft and giving, caring and intuitive.

* Women are forced into roles as family carers, encouraged to have as many children as possible and to be the primary carer to those children, stereotyped as having special natural ability to raise children.

That’s just a few.

Here’s the thing. Everything I just said above about “women”? Isn’t true for women. Rather, it is true for white women. Or cisgendered women. Or nondisabled women. It is not true for women as a class.“

Genderbitch Kinsey tells us why “I didn’t mean to be transphobic/racist/whatever!” is a pathetic excuse in Intent! It’s Fucking Magic!

“So say, if you make a bunch of racist jokes, instead of contributing to the systemic oppression of POC, the bewitching might of Intent (I’m capitalizing the I now, to give it proper respect as a primary element) spreads out, blocking every single person from fully hearing the awful racist shit you just said, further preventing them from internalizing it and using it to justify actions. It also prevents it from creating an environment where racist behavior is seen as more acceptable, by twisting the very threads of fate there as well! And, the best part? If you say it in earshot of someone who’s offended or hurt by it, the occult powers of Intent change everything! Now, instead of hearing a hurtful slur or sentiment that reminds of past abuses at the hands of privileged fuckjobs, the marginalized person in question only hears the beautiful natural sound of birds chirping. Or whale noises! Because you see, Intent is just that powerful. It literally keeps anyone from getting hurt by your fuckery!”

And last but certainly not least, a short video entitled How Not To Write About Africa (click the link to read the original essay) based on the essay by Binyavanga Wainaina. I’m not a big video watcher personally, but this is well worth the few minutes. Also, Djimon Hounsou’s voice is super duper sexy.