Surreptitiously Delicious

androphilia: Female Protesters Calling For The Release Of...

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:49:13 -0600

Female Protesters Calling For The Release Of Angela Davis From Prison, Xamar (Mogadishu), Somalia, 1972

anarcho-queer: FDA Approves Plan B (One-Step) For 15+ U.S....

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:38:03 -0600

FDA Approves Plan B (One-Step) For 15+

U.S. regulators on Tuesday lowered the age limit for Plan B One-Step emergency contraception, approving it for sale to patients as young as 15 and agreeing it will be available without a prescription and on store shelves instead of behind pharmacy counters, Food and Drug Administration officials announced.

The move, which grants an amended application by drugmaker Teva Women’s Health Inc., is a separate action from a federal judge’s ruling earlier this month that ordered the FDA to make the so-called “morning after pill” available to all reproductive ages.

anarcho-queer: America Only Gets Outraged About Gun Violence In...

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:26:41 -0600

anarcho-queer:

America Only Gets Outraged About Gun Violence In White Neighborhoods

On 24 April in the town where I live, a wonderful town that I love, a woman was shot to death in front of her four-year-old son, Joshua. According to authorities, she was a college student.

A young woman, obviously invested in education, undoubtedly with dreams of a good life for herself and her child, struck down. It’s a sad story, a tragedy worthy of deep sorrow and serious reflection about gun violence and gun policy, especially when added to the fact that it was the fourth fatal shooting in my town in a week. Despite the obvious potential of such a story to poke at the hearts and minds of anyone who hears about it, most people won’t hear about it. It won’t get in the 24-hour news cycle. And it certainly will not spark a national debate about gun control. Why? Because the woman who was killed, Donitra Henderson, was a black woman and she died on a street corner in Oakland, a predominantly black and Latino town, in front of her black child.

Gun violence affects black and Latino people in poor, inner-city neighborhoods on a regular basis. As The Washington Post reported, black people are 10 times more likely to be killed by a gun crime, and yet our deaths by gun are much less likely to result in national conversations in which liberals and conservatives duke it out over the second amendment. We become statistics, just one more added to the number of gun deaths in the US in a particular year, and that’s all.

As I wrote in my recent blog post, “Hey, White liberals: A Word On the Boston Bombings, the Suffering of White children, and the Erosion of Empathy,” if you’re not white, your tragic death doesn’t feel quite as tragic to the American media or the collective American conscience, which are inextricably linked. It does not inspire the kind of national outrage and grief that white deaths, and especially middle-class and affluent white deaths, inspire.

There is a certain level of indifference in this country to the deaths of people of color. But there is also a double standard in the narrative around gun violence, depending on where it takes place and who is affected by it. When it happens to wealthy white folks in the suburbs, it’s a tragedy visited upon those who didn’t deserve it. When it happens to black and Latino people in a city, it’s our own fault.

Take, for example, President Obama’s speech in Chicago about gun violence where he talked about policy change, but also focused a lot on the structure of the black family, saying:

“There’s no more important ingredient for success, nothing that would be more important for us reducing violence than strong, stable families – which means we should do more to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.”

Compare that to speeches he made following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a predominantly white area, where a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children. The president never connected the violence there with the structure of anybody’s family or with the failure of any white parents. Even though the shooter, Adam Lanza, was raised by a single mother. Instead, he promised the people of Newtown that lawmakers would stand beside them and create policy to protect them. Those are two very different messages.

One reason this double standard is so easy to apply is that the question of why gun violence happens so much in inner cities is brushed over or ignored. There are many factors: the effects of racism on individuals and communities, failed education systems, high unemployment, etc. These are rarely discussed in connection to gun violence on a national level.

Without that connection, and thus with no greater social ills to help explain it, it’s seen simply as the fault of the people who live in those places, as if they have some inherent defect in their families and their communities. And because it’s our fault and not, as in the case of violence against middle-class white people, a national tragedy, it does not warrant a national conversation.

This double standard leads to the further devaluing of black and Latino lives. It also contributes to the sporadic nature of the national gun control conversation itself. Because gun control is only talked about on a national level when multiple murders happen in affluent white places, it’s talked about a few times a year at most.

If the conversation were shifted to include the tragedies of people in the inner city, if our lives were valued enough by the American media and the collective US conscience to warrant that conversation, it would be an ongoing debate. Maybe then it would at least have a chance at leading to some actual change. Which would be great. Especially for those of us who are most often affected by it.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:15:32 -0600

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:04:10 -0600

cajla: Maria Elena Chavez and her granddaughter. Three of her...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:52:57 -0600

cajla:

Maria Elena Chavez and her granddaughter. Three of her sons died trying to cross the border. Cherán, Michoacán, Mexico.

gorgonetta: [Self-portraits by Carrie Mae Weems, Käthe...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:42:05 -0600

Carrie Mae Weems, self-portrait, Kitchen Table Series, 1990

Käthe Kollwitz, Self Portrait Drawing, 1933

Judy Baca, self portrait, 2009

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Monkeys, 1943

gorgonetta:

[Self-portraits by Carrie Mae Weems, Käthe Kollwitz, Judy Baca, and Frida Kahlo, text “Never apologize for selfies”]

Wanted to get modern women artists and some WOC up in this one. If you reblog it would be cool if you kept the part in the brackets so these artists, two of whom are still working, will get credit—this conversational part below is nbd.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:30:40 -0600

The Path through the Dunes

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:19:08 -0600

The Path through the Dunes

vanth: untitled by andrea_leigh on Flickr.

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:08:20 -0600

vanth:

untitled by andrea_leigh on Flickr.

collectivehistory: The Two Fridas, 1939 by Frida Kahlo Created...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:56:25 -0600

collectivehistory:

The Two Fridas, 1939 by Frida Kahlo

Created at the same time as her to divorce to Diego Rivera, The Two Fridas is Kahlo’s largest painting. It is believed to be a painting depicting her deep hurt at losing her husband. One Frida sits on the left of the painting; this is the Frida that was rejected by Rivera, Her blouse is ripped open, exposing her broken and bleeding heart. The Frida to the right, the one that Rivera still loves, has a heart that is still whole. She holds a small portrait of Rivera in her hand.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:18 -0600

novocainelipstick: Cry Baby (1990)

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:34:14 -0600

novocainelipstick:

Cry Baby (1990)

pleatedjeans: 24 Parents Who Are Doing it Right

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:22:53 -0600

pleatedjeans:

24 Parents Who Are Doing it Right

harperhug: Oh Toby.

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:11:43 -0600

harperhug:

Oh Toby.

Click for the most hilarious, relatable gifs.

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:49:13 -0600

Click for the most hilarious, relatable gifs.

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:37:48 -0600

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:27:11 -0600

Click for the most hilarious, relatable gifs.

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:16:13 -0600

Click for the most hilarious, relatable gifs.

shez-a-bitch: http://shez-a-bitch.tumblr.com

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:04:15 -0600

shez-a-bitch:

http://shez-a-bitch.tumblr.com