and what do we say to death

Sims, for his part, stonally declared himself "determined not to be foiled in the attempt" to operate. Sims had decided not only to operate upon Sam but to also to perform the surgery in a teaching clinic for a medical audience of students and potential proteges. He hoped to immortalize the operation in a medical publication, and no mere slave would frustrate this bid for medical glory.

But when the two adversaries met, Sims was all smiles. He kindly inquired into the slaves health and graciously invited Sam to have a seat. The barber's chair into which Sam had been welcomed had been surreptitiously fitted with wooden planks, and as soon as Sam was seated, five young physicians bounded forward to restrain him with straps about his thighs, knees, ankles, abdomen, chest, shoulders, arms, wrists, elbows, and head.

Sam, Sims noted, "appeared to be very much alarmed!" While he was being immobilized, ten medical students and fifteen interested "others" filed into watch as Sims operated for forty minutes to remove a large section of Sam's lower jaw bone, sans anesthesia. When he finished, the surgeon noted with satisfaction that his surgical innovation had "proved its practicality... whether the patient is willing or not." The editors of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal enthused that they were "pleased to record this highly creditable achievement of a Southern surgeon."

After he recuperated, Sam apparently lost no time in escaping to rural Alabama again, certainly with a redoubled aversion to Western medicine. There is no evidence that Sims ever saw Sam again, but his medical report took this parting shot: "Sam's mouth is always open in a wide grin.""

One powerful illustration of this process is found in the touching November 1846 memoirs of the newly minted Dr. Pray. He recounted how during his first anatomical dissection he had filled in overwhelming sympathy for the fate of the young girl under his scalpel. "Today are subject, a poor Negro girl, was brought up. Poor, despised and disregarded African, degraded and despised in life you are to be made a spectacle of and subject of ridicule and obscene jest even in death." Yet, under professional pressure, he immediately launched into a detailed public surgical dissection of the girl's labia.

A year later, the same doctor laughingly wrote of his antics the night before, when he had delighted in making a group of white women of his own social class scream in horror. How? By frightening them with "a piece of dead nigar" that he has saved from the dissecting table.

...Students such as the young George Pray were likely to be the most idealistic of caregivers, but they were also the most vulnerable to professional repercussions should they offend professors. They could not afford to criticize instructors, even obliquely, by suggesting that the clinical material should be treated as sensitively as white private patients. Eventually, students absorbed the racist values that informed their education at every turn."

This oral tradition is frequently dismissed as "old wives' tales" and "superstition" because tales of the theft of Black bodies sound fantastic to many whites- and to African Americans who pride themselves on their scientific sophistication. Many people assume that belief in the theft of Black bodies is paranoia born of a violently racist history.

But Janie Gaines and Sarah Cox know from experience that Black cadavers tend to disappear. In January 1998, the sisters frowned as they surveyed the crumbling headstones, trash, and tangled weeds strangling Greenwood, the Birmingham, Alabama cemetery in which their family had long ago laid their sister, Addie Mae Collins.

Although most Americans do not know her name, Addie Mae is a national icon of sorts. The thirteen-year-old was a martyr of the civil rights movement, one of four girls who were murdered in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church a few days after the city schools were integrated...

It was thirty years before her sisters could bear to visit her grave, and when they saw its neglected state, they immediately arranged to have Addie Mae moved to another, better-maintained cemetery. However, workers who opened the grave recoiled in shock: It was empty, devoid of casket and corpse.

Addie Mae's body, like so many buried and Black cemeteries throughout the south, is missing."

The cool, sunless basement had preserved the remains remarkably well. Bones and human "dissected material" littered the floors, metal tubs, and even latrines. Ossified human remains spilled from broken vets that had once held cadavers preserved in alcohol. Jars held fetal organs in vanishing lakes of whiskey- an indication that scientists had displayed the purloined bodies, using the alcohol as a preservative, in addition to dissecting them.

Because not only grave robbing but also anatomical dissection were illegal in Georgia until 1887, there was no legal source of such bodies: They were stolen, and in a manner that outraged decency and violated the law.

This disarticulated nightmare was all that remained of faceless people whose bodies had been dissected, then unceremoniously scattered in the basement amid a jumble of broken syringes, microscope slides, scalpels, old pill bottles, and other medical detritus. As years passed, medical personnel covered each stratum of human refuse with quicklime to squirrel the stench, and later the basement was cemented over.

Scientists determined that most of the remains dated from the nineteenth century, and detailed analyses of the bones and surrounding materials revealed that 75 percent of the bones in the basement were those of African americans, although Blacks constituted only 42 percent of the area's population."

Chapter 5- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington

For years after 9/11 we were constantly told “NEVER FORGET” and the idea was basically “keep feeling sad and afraid and especially ANGRY forever; don’t let time dull your emotional response like it’s naturally supposed to; continue to justify the injustices by feeling this way all the time.” And the 3000 deaths were constantly pointed to as this huge deal that justified any lengths to go to.

And then Covid hit. And there were several points during the height of the pandemic (because fun fact, according to the actual definitions of a pandemic, *it’s not technically over yet!* ) where we were having a 9/11’s worth of deaths every week or so. And suddenly 3000 deaths were not a big deal at all. Instead of being enough reason to go to war far away and strip us at home of many rights too, they weren’t even enough justification to make people wear a damn piece of fabric over their face.

3000 people died once and now the government can legally wiretap anyone without a warrant, and hold people at Gitmo under suspicion of terrorism (no need for due process)… 3000 people dying every week but we should all still be going out to brunch and concerts and who cares about the disabled and immunocompromised?

Equiping an armor tutorial

fuck twitter

fuck reddit

fuck tumblr

and fuck you

Screenshot via Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net on bluesky

Tldr Amnesty International, global human rights organisation, published a report called 'A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK'. In it is detailed, amongst others, a whole bunch of transphobic groups and organisations, including Beira's Place, JK Rowling's trans exclusionary sexual violence support service. JK Rowling threw a shit fit and got Amnesty to take the report down by threatening libel. This was obviously not enough, because you can't appease a fascist, so now she's going to bankroll a bunch of lawsuits anyway through the JK Rowling Women's Fund.*

You can read an archived version of the report here, please save it and share it.

what iron lung fans see

Do you know what the actual etiquette is? The one that's been around since Tumblr began? The one that's been followed dutifully up until the last few years?

Once an AU becomes so prevalent it starts becoming bothersome, YOU DON'T MAINTAG THE CANON FANDOM. Yes, this is a gray area when it comes to what constitutes as bothersome. Yes, bloodymary is WAY beyond that line.

Instead of bailing on the canon tag, SPREAD THIS MESSAGE. If someone refuses to follow this etiquette, BLOCK THEM.

You owe it to yourself, to your community, and to new fans who won't know the fandom exists in some obscure tag. Stand your ground and be vocal about this etiquette.

PS-- to the AU fans who insist they won't be found without the canon tag: yes you will. People subscribe to a tag when they know that's the fandom they want. People use the REGULAR SEARCH function to discover it. If your post has canon character or franchise names in it, or even non-canon tags, a regular search will display those.