Category: Uncategorized

smoochuu:

hot take: fat girls are allowed to have standards. fat girls are allowed to think you’re ugly and gross and unattractive and that you’re not worth their time. they shouldn’t have to settle because you already have dehumanized them and determined they are worth less than you. why would any woman want to be with a person who thinks she doesn’t respect herself because of the shape of her body? fat women are not easy, we’re not freaks who will do whatever you want to feel approval. we’re not desperate. We have no reason to be grateful for you.

pinkestslime:

Sexual assualt tw, I’m very sorry for putting this on your dashboard

Hello everyone, please consider reading this or sharing this if you would like… I’m intensely uncomfortable with going into detail but I was recently sexually assaulted over the weekend. I’m a physically disabled mixed lesbian and I recently stopped being homeless but live in a very unsafe environment temporarily after fleeing my physically and sexually abusive parents. I have no resources at all and desperately need help to afford things for after care, mostly helping pay for a doctor’s appointment to make sure I am not pregnant or have any diseases from the assault which is a very real possibility… I am so terrified and scared of this situation. My heart feels so so guilty asking for money for this because I feel it was my fault in some way, but I’m so scared and so desperate with no one in my life at all to turn to but my girlfriend. I have never been in this situation before and I am trying my hardest to stay calm and okay, but in reality I am pretty far from it…

Please, I feel overcome with guilt for even asking but if anyone has any spare pocket change this time of year it would really really save my life. My mental health really can’t take this situation and I need some kind of support to make it through. If you would like to, please consider passing around my transgender girlfriend’s PayPal ( https://www.paypal.me/Carinalifefund ) or my personal Venmo ( @mangostrawberry97 ). If you let me know if you donated anything, even a quarter, I’ll send you a really long thank you note and I can give you graphics for your blog, advice, I can draw you art, teach you languages, listen to your music or critique your work, anything anyone could possibly need.

Thank you so much for reading, I’m sorry I’m such a mess and if this seems entitled or indignant… Im so thankful if anyone would even reblog this. Thank you so much again!

Sexual assualt tw

Mike Pence Is Still to Blame for an HIV Outbreak in Indiana—but for New Reasons

thestateonmtv:

Using mathematical modeling, the researchers estimate that the HIV infections had been rising since 2011 and had actually peaked in January 2015, “over 2 months before the Governor of Indiana declared a public health emergency.”

Pence had been failing to deal with HIV in his state for years. Gonsalves and Crawford’s models estimate that instead of 215 infections in 2015, “a response on Jan 1, 2013, could have suppressed the number of infections to 56 or fewer, averting at least 127 infections”.

This was years before Indiana knew there was an HIV epidemic underway. Because of funding cuts, the only HIV testing provider in southeastern Indian had closed in 2013. This, according to the study, “could have delayed the diagnosis of the initial case of HIV infection in Scott County.”

The disaster in Scott County was not just a failure of clean needles or even just Indiana’s long-time “abstinence stressed” sexual education. It was a disaster born of a total abdication of Indiana’s public-health responsibility—and it’s the kind of health disaster we could see nationally. Pence is now vice president in an administration that is gutting HIV/AIDS resources and further criminalizing drug use—two paths that will increase HIV prevalence across the country. Meanwhile, the twin crises of deindustrialization and rising opioid usage mean that the conditions for localized HIV epidemics are not unique to Scott County. Gonsalves and Crawford write that the CDC believes there are “220 counties across the USA at risk of outbreaks of HIV” and hepatitis C.

As conditions favorable to epidemics spread across the country, the ability for public-health agencies to respond to such crises are being throttled. As NPR reported in 2016, 40 percent of health departments have reduced services, with one CDC official saying, “More than half of state and local STD programs have experienced budget cuts. In 2012, 20 health departments reported having to close their STD clinics.” And, as local governments are turning away from STD and overdose-prevention efforts, they are also incarcerating more people on charges related to drug addiction and sex work—and even prosecuting individuals for harm-reduction work.

The epidemiology of HIV flourishes amid drug stigma, homophobia, poverty, and racism; in turn, government approaches that allow HIV to thrive also breed homophobia, racism, classism, and drug panic.  Much of US society often doesn’t care about HIV infections or AIDS deaths—or about hepatitis infections or overdose deaths—when they are perceived to be happening to people who are black, queer, and/or immigrant. Gonsalves and Crawford’s study of Scott County shows that preventable epidemics can happen anywhere where austerity is combined with theocratic, anti-science policies. As public-health approaches are abandoned throughout the United States, that applies to increasingly large swaths of the country.

Mike Pence Is Still to Blame for an HIV Outbreak in Indiana—but for New Reasons