Under Construction

Cops can murder unarmed Black people and many white folks still jump to defend the police force.

“It’s time y’all. It’s time.”

We have not forgotten you, Sandra. 😔 Continue to rest in infinite power. 

“Somebody come get her, she’s dancin’ like a stripper" 

Christians will deadass claim to be oppressed but feel comfortable and safe enough to:

Force non-Christians to pray to the Christian God in their own fucking homes

Go door-to-door to proselytize

Call people to proselytize

Take classes to proselytize (my mythology teacher actually dealt with this, and now has to include a warning on the first day of class)

Cross the fucking ocean to proselytize

Openly tell people they think they are going to Hell

Insist that their beliefs should influence the law

Get all pissy if someone says this isn’t a Christian nation, but a beautifully mixed one.

Have radio stations built around their religion

Have movies based on their religion

And fucking everything else

Also, I think the idea of proselytizing (it’s called ‘witnessing’ where I’m from) is gross. I think opportunities to talk about God and religion should be an organic and mutual. Also, I don’t blame people for thinking Christianity is weird and strange. I mean honestly, I still find the idea of Christ to be hard to fathom most days. I think the idea is beautiful and brings me comfort along with the idea that there’s more to life after we die, but that doesn’t mean I’m 100% sold on it.

Christianity is gross and extremely steeped in colonialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia.

‘Black nonmen … 66% of … abortion recipients … 243% more likely to die from childbirth … as white women.’

‘Black nonmen … more likely to die from childbirth … white women.’

‘Black nonmen … white women.’

@smittywerbenjaegermannjensen this is what it's been like on the interstate/highways in Tennessee for like eight years now.

it means i can oppose war, american imperialism, the military industrial complex, and the cult of male violence without discounting the myriad factors that contribute to someone enlisting, including but not limited to millions of dollars spent annually to recruit children. 

Post reads as follows

I performed an emergency surgery several months ago to treat a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The patient could have died, but we were able to stabilize her and send her home the same day.

She called my office this week in tears asking why we did not reimplant her pregnancy in her uterus, why did we not offer her this option. Because maybe her baby didn’t have to die.

Pseudoscience is invading my operating room and my relationship with my patients. This poor woman had to have emergency surgery, and then grieved the loss of a pregnancy that was never viable, that could have killed her.

And now she is grieving it again because politicians who lack even the most basic understanding of the physiology of pregnancy are dangling untruths in front of her and calling it fact.

In case anyone reading this is wondering, THIS IS NOT A THING. It is NOT POSSIBLE to reimplant ectopic pregnancies into the uterus. These are NOT viable pregnancies, and all the wishing in the world, the magical thinking, the political grandstanding, will not make it so.

This is the reproductive system in question.

Interesting, right? I’ve been told it looks like a shark.

In viable pregnancies, a fertilized egg (known as a zygote in biology) implants in the wall of the uterus.

As the pregnancy progresses, the zygote grows. Cells undergo mitosis (where the cells replicate) and differentiation (where the cells take on special jobs and become organ systems). At full term, the zygote resembles a baby we know.

The placenta delivers nutrients to the fetus and helps detoxify wastes. From the placenta comes the umbilical cord, which serves a similar purpose. The fetus’ head presses against the cervix, through which it will pass during birth. The part in the circle are the pregnant person’s internal organs! The uterus smooshes them to make room. It’s no wonder they use the restroom so often!

In an ectopic pregnancy, however, the zygote doesn’t implant correctly.

It can implant in a variety of places (including the fallopian tube, pictured) to which it is not suited.

After it implants, it continues to undergo mitosis (which we talked about earlier). Whereas the uterus is equipped to deal with this exponential growth, other parts of the body are not.

As the zygote grows, it puts immense strain on the organ it implanted in. If it continues to grow too long, it can rupture! The zygote will lose blood supply and will quickly die. The pregnant person will begin to bleed internally without proper medical care. Left alone, it can lead to death of the pregnant person.

This diagram is a little complex, but put very simply, because the zygote hasn’t implanted in the right place originally, it cannot be removed and implanted in the correct one. It won’t be able to fuse correctly with the uterus, or to send signals to develop the umbilical cord and placenta we talked about earlier, not to mention that the rupture causes blood to be diverted from the zygote, effectively killing it before it can be implanted.

Not only is it futile, but it’s unsafe for the pregnant person. Ectopic pregnancies cause blood loss, which is exacerbated by further surgical intervention. Exposure to external environments exposes the zygote to infection, and surgical implantation exposes the pregnant person to infection, which could also lead to pregnancy complication or loss.

Oh . ..

Gay doesnt mean non-binary.

Trans doesnt mean non-binary.

hijra:

“an identity used in south asian cultures such as india, pakistan, and bangladesh. it’s used as a way to describe femininity in men and used to be used to describe intersex people or people with indeterminate genitalia. it is also seen as a homage to hindu mythology. they are people who are born male but take on feminine roles, act femininely, and dress as such. it used to be that castration was required to be a hijra, but this is not the case anymore. they take on this role in order to represent shiva, who was an ageless and sexless supreme being. many live in communities that are solely filled with hijras which are led by a guru, whilst others are forced into sex work or begging to make it by.”

this identity is reserved solely for biological males or intersex individuals. biological females cannot be hijra. it was created to forcibly other feminine men and intersex people. to say, “you are not real men because you are feminine or because you have an intersex disorder.” they’re also often forced into poverty and prostitution and are murdered at high rates. many of them are gay men. my friend taught german to a gay man who fled from pakistan to avoid becoming hijra or being murdered. contrary to popular belief, pakistan doesn’t support genuine trans people ( you know, the people with sex dysphoria who want to transition from one sex to another ).

“But those who identify as transgender, like Choudary, don’t subscribe to the guru-chelah system. As a result, Rana and her chelahs view the transgender identity as alien and even immoral.”

““If you don’t have a guru, we don’t recognize you. These people who say they are transgender; that concept is just wrong,“ says one of Rana’s chelahs. “They can never be women. They cannot give birth. Even if they change their bodies they can’t change who they are. We are not women. We are what Allah has made.””

“But what if you identify not as a Khawaja Sira, or even as a transgender woman, but as a transgender man? In Pakistan’s fiercely patriarchal society, the idea of a person whose birth sex is assigned as female growing up to identify as male is almost unheard of.”

while hijras are simultaneously celebrated and ridiculed for being gender non-conforming, trans people who want to physically transition and who do not identify as khawaja sira are rejected. it’s especially difficult for trans men because they’re biologically female and pakistan is a patriarchal society.

two spirit:

“The Lakota two spirit people are never born women.  Almost all of them, historically, have been men.”

“You see this in large numbers of patriarchal American Indian cultures: societies where there’s a firmly established “third” gender that men can elect to participate in (sometimes as older people, sometimes from an early age), while women’s gender roles are firmly entrenched and allow for little variance.”

“What’s instead true is that American Indian nations that had more rigid gender roles and assigned women less power historically felt the need to strip male/female identities from non-conformers, while more egalitarian societies with less gender socialization lack two-spirit people because of, rather than in spite of, their lack of emphasis on sex-assigned gender roles.” [ x ] 

two spirit was almost exclusively reserved for men. it was a third gender they could elect to participate in ( granted, it stripped them of their male title

bugis:

“Makkunrai and oroané are comparable to cisgender women and men, respectively.”

“Bissu are androgynous shamans.”

“For one to be considered bissu, all aspects of gender must be combined to form a whole. That can include those who are born intersex. However, some of them have fully functioning male or female sexual organs.”

“According to the Bugis gender system, calabai are false women and so are generally assigned male at birth but take on the role of heterosexual females. Their fashions and gender expression are distinctly feminine but do not match that of “typical” cis-gendered women.”

“The calalai are assigned female at birth but take on the roles of heterosexual males. They dress and present themselves as men, hold masculine jobs and typically live with female partners to adopt children.”

makkunrai and oroané are straight, gender-conforming, cisgender women and men. bissu are gender non-conforming ( androgynous ) individuals or intersex individuals. calabai are gay, feminine men or trans women. calalai are gay, masculine women or trans men. 

do you see the problem here? this is a society that forcibly assigns gender non-conforming, gay, intersex, and trans people another label. imagine being a trans woman and being referred to as a “false woman.” imagine being a gay man and being referred to as a “false woman.” imagine being a trans man and being referred to as a “false man.” imagine being a lesbian and being referred to as a “false man.” lmao isn’t it just so cool that lesbians and trans men have to share the same label? that gay men and trans women have to share the same label? isn’t it cool that if you’re intersex, you’re considered bissu and are automatically viewed as androgynous and can’t just be a man or a woman? isn’t it cool that if you’re a straight gnc calalai, you’re likely forced to take a female partner? or that if you’re a straight gnc calabai, you’re likely forced to take a male partner? because you can’t be gay freely in bugis society. if you like the same sex, you’re automatically no longer considered to be your own sex. 

māhū:

“Māhū is the expression of the third self,” Kaumakaiwa Kanaka‘ole, a Native Hawaiian activist and performer told Mana magazine. “It is not a gender, it’s not an orientation, it’s not a sect, it’s not a particular demographic and it’s definitely not a race. It is simply an expression of the third person as it involves the individual. When you find that place in yourself to acknowledge both male and female aspects within and accept the capacity to embrace both … that is where the māhū exists and true liberation happens.”

“In pre-contact Hawaii ( before white explorers and missionaries brought their homophobia with them ), māhūs were considered special and assumed respected and traditional roles within the communities. “After colonization, it became common for “māhū” to be used pejoratively to refer mostly to gay men and drag queens, but sometimes also butch women, and transgendered people of all kinds.”

māhū refers to gender non-conforming individuals, trans people, and gay people. once again, another social role used to other anyone who doesn’t satisfactorily conform. 

fa'afafine:

“fa'afafine are assigned male at birth, and explicitly embody both masculine and feminine gender traits, fashioned in a way unique to this part of the world. Their behavior typically ranges from extravagantly feminine to conventionally masculine.”

oh, joy. another social role reserved solely for males in which they can express their gender non-conformity ( at the cost of stripping their male title ) while females have no such option. 

and you’re not going to meet and marry someone

and that’s fine

and if marriage happens, it happens. and it’s not the next big ticket to check off in life’s checklist

because not everyone meets someone they want to marry. and that’s normal

Did you know that modern C sections were invented by African women— centuries before they were standard elsewhere?

Midwives and surgeons living around Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria perfected the procedure hundreds of years ago. When a baby couldn’t be delivered vaginally, these healers sedated the laboring mother using large amounts of banana wine. They tied the mother to the bed for safety, sterilized a knife using heat, and made the incision, acting quickly as a team to prevent excessive blood loss or the accidental cutting of other organs. The combination of sterile, sharp equipment and sedation made the procedure surprisingly calm and comfortable for the mother.

After the baby was delivered, antiseptic tinctures and salves were used to clean the area and stitches were applied. Women rarely developed infections, shock, or excessive blood loss after a cesarean section and the most common problem reported was that it took longer for the mother’s milk to come in (an issue that was solved with friends and relatives who would nurse the baby instead).

In Uganda, C sections were normally performed by a team of male healers, but in Tanzania and DRC, they were typically done by female midwives.

The majority of women and babies survived this, and when questioned about it by European colonists in the mid-1800s, many people in Uganda and Tanzania indicated that the procedure had been performed routinely since time immemorial.

This was at a time when Europeans had only barely started to figure out that they should wash their hands before performing surgery, when nearly half of European and US women died in childbirth, and when nearly 100% of European women died if a C section was performed.

Detailed explanations of Ugandan C-sections were published globally in scholarly journals by the 1880s and helped the rest of the world learn how to save mothers and babies with minimal complications.