A Non-Partisan Request , posted by Rob Tisinai, January 27, 2012
One small edit suggested by Lucrece in Comment 1 and this becomes PERFECT:
Replace senator with politician.
January 30, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY:
NY Times Report AIDS Breakthrough: 1996. The AIDS epidemic had raged unchecked for at least fifteen years with very little hope in sight. For countless numbers of people around the world, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. …
Then in 1996, an entirely new type of drug, Indinavir (marketed as Crixivan) entered the market. Known as a protease inhibitor, it inhibits another HIV enzyme known as the protease enzyme from functioning. The New York Times wrote a very cautious report on the breakthrough. …
As tentative as the initial reports were, the results soon proved unmistakeable. When 3TC joined AZT in 1995 as a viable treatment, there was a noticeable plateau in the number of deaths due to AIDS. But in 1996 when the three-drug cocktail became available, the number of deaths due to AIDS would see its first drop since the epidemic began. And it wasn’t a slight drop either — it was a 20% improvement from the year before. People at death’s door began coming back from the abyss. …
The three-drug cocktail, which became known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), wasn’t a cure, but the breakthrough was undeniable. … More recent research shows that, thanks to HAART, people with AIDS can now expect a near-normal lifespan. And yet, HAART’s side effects can take a brutal toll on the body … which makes finding a cure still as important as ever.
The world through the eyes of a cat.
hahahahahahaha holy shit
(Source: tastefullyoffensive, via notemily)
(venn diagram with a light green background and three entirely separate circles for “GENDER IDENTITY”, “SEXUAL ORIENTATION” AND “BIOLOGICAL SEX”)
(via lipstick-feminists)
Posted January 27, 2012 at 12:06am in gender identity sexual orientation biological sex venn diagram
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6,996 notes
President Obama, yelling at Presidential Candidates after they do nothing to stop the booing of gay soldiers.
<3
This. Just fucking this.
(Source: gerardthehomosexual, via lipstick-feminists)
Attacks on Social Security, Medicare borrow a strategy from Lenin
For three decades, conservatives’ proposals for dramatic changes to the programs have reflected a divide-and-conquer strategy inspired by the Leninist movement.
Women in the Battlefield and the Barracks: A Five-Part Series on Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers
by: H. Patricia Hynes, Truthout
The first decade of the 21st century was a record one for women serving in the US military: Women constituted 14 percent of all active duty military (over 200,000), with one in ten serving in the Middle East and 17 percent in the National Guard. Women soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though barred from ground combat, have worked in as dangerous situations as men. These same women have found themselves, concurrently, the target of sexual assault by “brothers in arms” at nearly twice the rate of US society. Military sexual trauma is so severe that it is more likely to cause post-traumatic stress disorder in women than combat trauma and civilian sexual trauma - because of military culture.
In this series, “The Battlefield and the Barracks: Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers,” we will probe the magnitude of sexual assault and harassment of women in the military. What is it about military culture that results in such extreme sexual crime? Why is sexual assault so traumatizing for women soldiers? What are the responses of the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration to the epidemic of sexual crime in their midst, with its multiple health consequences? And what are the radical changes necessary to reform a recalcitrant military?
Cynthia Nixon debuts bald look for her role in the Broadway production of Wit, where she plays a cancer ridden poetry professor.
Our community, much like society-at-large, needs a paradigm shift as it relates to our sexual assault prevention efforts. For so long all of our energy has been directed at women, teaching them to be more “ladylike” and to not be “promiscuous” to not drink too much or to not wear a skirt. Newsflash: men don’t decide to become rapists because they spot a woman dressed like a video vixen or because a girl has been sexually assertive.
How about we teach young men when a woman says stop, they stop? How about we teach young men that when a woman has too much to drink that they should not have sex with her, if for no other reason but to protect themselves from being accused of a crime? How about we teach young men that when they see their friends doing something inappropriate to intervene or to stop being friends? The culture that allows men to violate women will continue to flourish so long as there is no great social consequence for men who do so. And while many men punished for sexual assaults each year, countless others are able to commit rape and other crimes against women because we so often blame the victim instead of the guilty party.
Holding women and girls accountable for preventing sexual assault hasn’t worked and so long as men commit the majority of rapes, men need to be at the heart of our tactics for preventing them.
Let’s stop teaching ‘how to avoid being a victim’ and instead, attack the culture that creates predators in the first place.
—
Zerlina Maxwell, Stop Telling Women How to Not Get Raped, Ebony.com, 1/14/12
::wild applause::
(via racialicious)
Posted January 24, 2012 at 5:58pm in Back to Basics gender privilege rape sexual assault the male gaze violence women
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468 notes
Does Wisconsin Still Have a Budget Deficit?
Governor Walker has been touting the state’s balanced budget. Yet his administration submitted a report to the federal government asking for clearance to cut thousands of people from Medicaid because the state faces a three billion dollar deficit.
Sex education should focus not just on the mechanics of heterosexual sex and how to keep it safe – important as these are – but on varieties of sex. Sex between girls, sex between boys; the importance of enthusiastic consent – in effect, discussion of how to have good sex rather than just safe sex. The fact that girls as well as boys enjoy sexual activity is important to emphasise. I’ll never forget overhearing a conversation on a bus where a boy was asking a female friend of mine, both around 18, why girls masturbated. That alone demonstrates to me the need for better education.
Posted January 22, 2012 at 3:28pm in Back to Basics fyFACTS! human sexuality SexEd This I Believe
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1,153 notes