BREAKING: Bill Cosby sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison for sexual assault

profeminist:

TW for sexual assault

“At the Montgomery County Courthouse Tuesday, a judge sentenced the 81-year-old former TV star after two days of arguments from the prosecution and defense over whether Cosby should be considered a “sexually violent predator.”

On Tuesday, Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill ruled that the comedian is a “sexually violent predator.” The classification means that Cosby must undergo monthly counseling for the rest of his life and report quarterly to authorities. His name will appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbors, schools and victims.

Prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to give the comedian five to 10 years behind bars, while his lawyers asked for house arrest, saying the legally blind Cosby is too old and helpless to do time in prison.”

Read the full piece here

chavisory:

fierceawakening:

moranion:

greywash:

lilliburlero:

skeleton-richard:

viletorpedo:

jacquez45:

vastderp:

rshathul:

vethica:

who-gives-a-ship:

shobijinsandy:

Dear people who ship taboo relationships

Such as in///cest and ped///ophilia

Do NOT harm yourself. That doesn’t help, and asking you to do so doesn’t help.

Instead? Tell your parents. Tell your family, tell your friends, your teachers, your employers, EVERYONE you know and interact with, that you support and even romanticize abusive content. Tell them that you think it’s harmless.

Well?

We’re waiting.

I do tell a lot of people. My mom, for example. She’s a writer too and she knows that I enjoy writing dark stories. I said people were mad at me on the internet over a ship and she immediately guessed which (very problematic) ship it was and was shocked that people had told me to die over something so ridiculous. I recently told my therapist that I write and enjoy darkfic sometimes, specifically mentioning the sort of sexual content they involve. His first impulse was to worry that I might feel guilty about my harmless interest. I told my previous therapist that I get off to violent fictional media and she said it was fine because she knew I’d never hurt a fly in real life. I’ve told my coworkers about the sort of movies I like (horror) and they didn’t care at all. Turns out people who work at libraries know how fiction works. My childhood best friend has known I’m a sadist for as long as I can remember and it never seemed to bother her. I still have a reputation as a very polite and helpful person, and my friends feel comfortable telling me secrets and asking for advice.

You know what always shocks people? When I tell them about the hate I’ve recieved online for my ships. My mom regularly says she’s proud of me for standing up for myself and others online, and my therapist considers it a very positive act. I don’t tell EVERYONE I interact with about my problematic ships (hi I’d like a number 1 combo with cheese also I think Thor and Loki should kiss), but I don’t hide it at all. The worst I’ve ever gotten is people being mildly surprised that someone as silly and positive as me loves horror.

Tell your family, tell your friends, your teachers, your employers, EVERYONE you know and interact with

“and that’s all 300 pairs of fictional characters I want to kiss each other. any questions?”

“ma’am this is a wal-mart”

Told my mom I wanted to rip open kylo rens abdominal cavity and she just shrugged so op idk what you’re expecting to happen here

“Hey young people, i want you to initiate sexually explicit conversations with lots of grown ups you barely know”

NICE TRY JARED FROM SUBWAY

I feel like antis might not know what kind of things get written about in published books.

Like if you think ya mom hasn’t read books like flowers in the attic (probably still the English-speaking world’s most popular incest book) or the world according to Garp (in which a woman gets pregnant by raping a disabled man and later a different woman bites off a dude’s cock) or never watched a soap or a telenovela in her life and is going to be shocked by these things……….I mean even if you’re like “no my mom reads only respected works of literature and has never heard of television” or something have I got news for you about those as well the absolute most shocking sexual abuse stuff I have ever read was in poetry and I felt like my teeth had been punched down my throat, reading it, it was amazing, yes it was even more shocking than The Bluest Eye (go ask your lit-reading mom what that is, it is a very important book you should know about). Also I guarantee you even if your mom has literally only read the Bible in her entire life you know there’s incest-rape in that, right, it’s only in one of the most famous bits (it comes after the attempted gang rape of the angels, the dude offering his daughters up for gang rape instead, and then his wife getting turned into salt, so I guess him getting raped by his own daughters later gets left out of the tale a lot).

People understand about literature. They comprehend fiction. They can distinguish between fantasy and what people do in reality. They really do, and can, without too much trouble.

Imagine what the world would be like if everybody did this — if it was totally normal for my boss to walk up to me and tell me what fictional relationships she considered to be tolerable reading material in the interests of transparency. I’m not saying it would do anything, I just think it would be really funny. Even if my opinions about the relationships of fictional characters were likely to strike fear and horror into the heart of everyone who’s ever met me, I guarantee people would also be weirded out if you went around sweetly reciting the list of your wholesomest cartoon character ships and how you only read about the purest, most innocuous content. Nobody actually gives a shit.

“Mom? I have something really important to tell you, because somebody on the Internet said so. Sometimes I write fanfiction where vampires kiss. Sometimes I write weepy self indulgent screeds about bad stuff happening to my fictional favorite characters. Sometimes I read about butt stuff. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My mom, surrounded by Laurel K. Hamilton and Anne Rice first editions while watching a TV drama about age difference arranged marriage cousincest, shakes her head solemnly and hangs up the phone. I’m dead to her.

…I’ll make sure to include a transcript of my Ao3 profile with my CV. Yes I know I wrote that good paper on the Cult of Reason and also have done groundbreaking work in translating Middle English poetry but… I have to admit I’ve written several fics that involve an age gap of 20+ years… And I’ve written a lot of incest with first cousins… I’m not proud of my sin…

Why is it that your interests and work has to be the business of everyone else and their arbitrary rules? Whatever happened to ykinmk? Do people never go outside?

I’m disconnected enough from fandom these days that I forget about purity culture for months on end and then I get a reminder that somehow the anti thing is still chugging along, and I have a good laugh because my one colleague who is actually a legit world-famous writer made her name writing Gothic drama about paedophiliac incest and cat people.

hey everyone I have a GREAT idea

oh my god, op

like, the most fucked up movie I’ve ever seen in my life (and funny enough, one of my favourites) is The Night Porter – and guess who recommended that to me?

yeah. my mom. the same person who told me when I was 14 or 15: “Please don’t have sex this young, but if you must, here is some cash for condoms, and if you ever think you might be pregnant, tell me, I promise I won’t be mad, we’ll take care of it.”

I’m sorry that you had a puritanic upbringing and you think mentioning smth sexual and/or – gasp! – illegal to your parents or to your friends is just the awfulest thing ever, but luckily, that’s not the norm.

Okay, so I don’t generally think or write about the particular thing that has this generation’s antis so riled, but

…people who want to know what I think about can buy my books? They can write reviews of what they think about them? Hell, they can pirate them if they’re douchebags who don’t like being minimally decent to smalltime queer authors?

I’m not sure what public announcements above and beyond that would do.

This is what I was talking about re: antis not reading enough non-fanfic to know what is really in books, and why most people read what they read.

Hell, even “respected works of literature?” The year that the Communications Decency Act was a thing, my ability to buy the books I needed for AP English class was in serious danger for a minute there. Like, Beloved, anyone? The Once and Future King? Tess of the D’Urbervilles? The Prince of Tides? Like Water for Chocolate?

Do you know what is in books?

angryirene:

geekandmisandry:

How many people have to be raped because they are bisexual, how many have to be violently abused because they are bisexual, treated differently in the workplace because they are bisexual before I stop hearing “biphobia is just misdirected homophobia, bisexuals don’t face oppression for being bisexual they only face discrimination”.

How many of us literally have to die before this bad discourse dies too?

This is intense. If any of my followers want me to start tagging things, let me know. But I felt like I needed to reblog this because I’ve been seeing a resurgence of the bi-discourse on this blue hellscape and I am so goddamn tired of it.

We are here and we have a complicated set of issues that need to be addressed AS THEIR OWN ISSUES, not as misdirected other issues. Intersectionality is a thing. Please don’t forget us or throw us under your discourse bus.

kindnessinink:

tema-time:

plunderpuss:

tallulah99:

datiek:

popping-smoke:

mbisthegame:

oparnoshoshoi:

anarchyandacupofcoffee:

OK Highway Patrol Captain George Brown says the best “tip” for women to not get raped by a cop is to “follow the law in the first place so you don’t get pulled over.”
http://youtu.be/BO8g8akPWcY (Last third of the video).

Three serial rapists in 3 weeks arrested in Oklahoma, all cops.

Follow for Anarchy | Follow for Feminism

Pro tip: if you’re signaled to pull over (whether you’re male or female) and you’re in a place that has no witnesses, turn your hazard lights on to acknowledge the officer’s siren, and drive to the nearest gas station or populated area. This is accepted protocol by every agency. You are not obligated pull over until you can do so safely. This includes personal safety. Understand your rights, brothers and sisters. There are disgusting examples of authority in this world.

HAZARD LIGHTS ARE NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. IT IS NOT ACCEPTED PROTOCOL BY EVERY AGENCY. DO NOT JUST CONTINUE DRIVING WITH YOUR HAZARD LIGHTS IN CASE THE COP MIGHT THINK IT’S A LOW-SPEED CHASE.

I know that sounds dumb, but hear me out. My mother is a dispatcher for the local police station. I asked her about how to pull over for a cop and even brought up the use of hazard lights, and she told me that it is not always accepted. This is what she told me you can do in order to feel safe when pulling over:

Call the police. No, really. Call and tell the dispatcher where you are and that there is a cop behind you demanding you pull over. The dispatcher can and will stay on the line with you while they look up the area you’re in to see if it’s one of their station’s cops. Then, once the cop comes to your window, you can crack it open (it only has to be an inch!) while still on the phone with the dispatcher. This is definitely, 100% accepted protocol.

The dispatcher will verify that it is their own, real cop, and they will gladly stay on the line with you throughout your interaction with the officer. And God forbid this ever happens to any of you, but if something were to happen to you during this time, you’ve already contacted 911 and given your location to the dispatcher.

Please keep this in mind if you are ever requested to pull over and do not feel safe. The dispatcher will understand. Do not, however, continue to drive, because there might be the off-chance an officer will think you’re flat-out refusing to pull over (a well-lit, populated area might be a ways away).

Stay safe.

Signal boost.

Because I personally know some creepy ass mother fuckers who became cops because they’re demented psychopaths and they get off on having control over people.

In light of current bullshit, this might be a good idea for a LOT of people, not just women. Marginalized minorities of all stripes, take note. I hate taking up an emergency dispatcher’s resources, but i also hate seeing yet another fucked up news story about police harming citizens.

THIIIIS

Remember not to drive home right away either. Cops have no issue making up reasons to break in and rape you either.

greyshadowquestionsbeing:

translesbiantheo:

All the UK Trump protests are really depressing to me. Like, so much angry creative & rebellious energy has gone into something that effectively functions as state propaganda – the implication of this scathing attitude towards Trump’s policies is that ours are noticeably better and I feel like honestly half the reason why people have showed up for this stuff is like, a weird sense of nationalism.

There is a weird UK nationalist tradition – supported by education, media, and everything else – of pointing fingers abroad to laugh and mock.

Like, Britain is known for mocking itself but on the small things. Most Brits, in my experience, can tell you a lot more about the issues with say the US or Australia’s immigration detention centres, but the ones here in the UK – with indefinite detention and really high rates of reported sexual assault and rapes…if just 10% or even 5% of the energy and creativity and emotion was put into protesting Trump was put into protesting UK issues, maybe not as much shite would happen.

I mean, people came out in droves about biometric ID cards for citizens – that it was inhumane, against people’s human right to privacy, that we can’t trust the government with that information, the whole thing was scrapped…for citizens…when biometric ID requirements were applied to non-EU immigrants (after the government bragged it ran the immigration services in the UK as for-profit)…there were crickets. People just say ‘those migrants know what they’re getting into’ (ignoring how much immigration law has changed over the years, I came pre-ID cards when we were just supposed to carry our visas and no obligation to update them even when we update our passports, just carry the old ones) which echoes a lot of sentiments I here elsewhere that many Brits are happy to condemn.

It’s just so much easier to point fingers elsewhere. And it seems like way too many people would rather smugly run with scapegoating distractions than confront (abundant) problems closer to home.

And Trump is such low-hanging fruit.

Meanwhile, the evil gits running things here are all too happy to use this. While the exact same players are responsible for a great deal of the current political mess in both countries. That makes it extra frustrating to me.

(The little changed immigration law tangent I started off on got its own post, not to distract from the excellent points other people have made here.)

elodieunderglass:

sourcedumal:

seekingwillow:

machawicket:

darkmagyk:

So, I just wrote that big thing on ‘progressive’ white America’s modern view of the chattel slavery of African Americans, and I have deiced, on behalf of all white people, we need to stop lying to each other. Teachers, tour guides, even just random people, when they get asked “Was Master X nice to his slaves” or “But most slaves were treated well, right?” Need to uniformly answer “No.”

No owner ever treated a slave well. Not George Washington, Not Thomas Jefferson, not your potential ancestors, not the nice family you heard about on vacation last year. To own another human being is to not treat them well.

We have to stop lying to kids (and each other) and saying that there is a humane way to strip another human being of there right to self, to take a person and create a marketable commodity .

White Americans still benefit from the legacy of slavery, and Black American’s still suffer from it. We need to stop teaching it as an ancient quirk that left few scars because everyone was more or less happy.

It wasn’t symbiotic, it was parasitic, and we need to stop saying otherwise.

To own another human being is to not treat them well.

Aside (in relation to hearing about another conversation): To own another human being, means they cannot give enthusiastic consent to sex. There were no slave and master love stories. The inability to say no to the person who can beat you, kill you, starve you, sell off family members, sell you off away from all you’ve ever known, kill family members and or torture them – means there’s no consent to sex.

No slave master ever fell in love with a slave then treated them right by NOT freeing them and not freeing their family and not supporting abolition.

The fact that a person did not have the full autonomy and were forced to be at the whim of another person is abuse. Period. Slavery was ongoing abuse.

All of these bullshit ‘massa treated me well’ narratives are STOCKHOLM SYNDROME.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD SLAVE OWNER. THEY ARE ABUSERS. ALL. SLAVE. OWNERS. WERE. VIOLENT. ABUSERS

CW FOR SLAVERY

Want to know a good way to shut down Thomas Jefferson apologists?

Point out the fact that under Virginian standards in Jefferson’s time, the children he fathered on Sally Hemings were white.

Sally Hemings was one quarter black and three quarters white.* She had three white grandparents and one black grandparent in the maternal line.

Jefferson was white. So the children that Jefferson impregnated Sally with were one-eighth black and seven-eighths white. Virginian law during Jefferson’s time stated that a person who had one black great-grandparent was a white person. They were, in the racial parlance of the time, ‘octoroons’ and octoroons were considered white people (NB: THIS IS A VERY LOADED RACIST TERM, AND I’M USING IT HERE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, DO NOT USE THIS TERM TO DESCRIBE PEOPLE.) The children were slaves because they were born to an enslaved mother**, but they were legally white children, and Jefferson deliberately decided to keep them in slavery, which was allowed at the time.*** This is where the apologists get uncomfortable. They’re like “Don’t make this weird.” And you’re like WEIRDER THAN IT IS ALREADY?

Now, not only were they the half-siblings of Jefferson’s own children, and were raised in slavery, but Sally Hemings was the half-sibling of Jefferson’s wife. Sally Hemings and Martha shared a father. Sally was 25 years younger than Martha, and Martha and her husband inherited baby Sally as property after her father’s death. At the age of 14, Sally – used as a servant for the Jefferson’s teenage daughters – became Thomas’s concubine and got pregnant. SO THAT’S REALLY NICE. TOTALLY NOT CREEPY OR WEIRD.

Jefferson didn’t see a problem with enslaving and impregnating his wife’s sister IN HIS WIFE’S HOUSE – his wife’s teen sister that he had OWNED SINCE SHE WAS A TINY BABY – and keeping the resulting children as property. There’s no need to make it weird, guys! This is totally normal behavior.

The only reason that Sally, as a pregnant teen in France, did not run
away from Jefferson in a country where she was legally free was because
he apparently promised to free her children at the age of 21.

In their 20s, two of the children (Beverly, a boy, and Harriet, a girl) ran away to the North, where they were legally free.

They self-identified as white, entered white society, and married middle-class white people. They disappeared into history.

Jefferson did not pursue them or make any attempt to recover his property, which is seen to demonstrate his Compassion, and the fact that he totally Freed His Children. But not legally. And in such a way that they ran about in the North for a bit, sparking interested gossip and speculation, because they looked a hell of a lot like Jefferson. People try to handwave it – “Oh, he freed them by letting them escape… we don’t mean that he FREED them, like gave them official papers to keep them safe from slavecatchers or allow them to vote or anything… he just didn’t…. run them down with dogs.”

When
Beverly ran away, he was 24. Remember how Jefferson promised to free the kids at the age of 21? That must have been an awkward few years. “So can I have some voting rights and the ability to get married, like you promised my mother, please? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness? Can I get a little of that?” “Oh no, don’t worry about it. Tell you what, if you ever decide to run away and are forced to establish yourself in an alien society from scratch without ever seeing your family again, I won’t run you down with dogs.” NOW THAT’S GOOD PARENTING

Jefferson legally freed the two surviving sons in his will – it was a dicey moment, because he died in Lots of Fucking Debt and huge chunks of Wayles-Jefferson-Hemings family got auctioned off randomly and weren’t seen again. But the other two boys were freed and just about managed to dodge the debt collectors. After his death, they remained in the South and married, only moving away when they feared slavecatchers would kidnap them. Imagine leaving your own children (who were also your wife’s nephews) in that situation. BUT THAT’S NOT WEIRD.

Jefferson didn’t want to deal with any political awkwardness that would happen if he officially freed any of the children when he was alive.

Because, you know.

That would have made it weird.

* This is known and recorded; her family tree is clear. It was valuable information that contributed to her ‘market value.’ Disgusting! But clearly recorded!

**This changed later, and varied by state; you can read plenty of accounts of “white slaves” with predominantly Caucasian features being bought and sold in the South. The ‘just one drop’ rule was widely adopted to make this easier for slavers – if one black ancestor could be proved or suggested, the person could be bought and sold as property. A young vulnerable white person with no family could be conveniently be ‘accused’ of having black ancestry, so that blue-eyed-blondes could be purchased and sold as sexual slaves – and used to produce more slaves! This was absolutely shocking for European visitors at the time, who wrote it all down and went “LOOK AT THE FUCKERY THE AMERICANS ARE DOING?! DO YOU BELIEVE THIS? THEY INVENTED A SPECIFIC KIND OF RACISM TO JUSTIFY SLAVERY AND NOW THEY’RE NOT EVEN STICKING TO THEIR OWN RULES??” So you know, this was just incredibly terrible and unethical the whole way down. Hopefully everyone gets that? Does using white people as an example clarify matters for everyone? It’s problematic, but it’s a technique that abolitionists used for hundreds of years, because it’s effective and usually REALLY freaks out apologists. Thus there was the now-forgotten plot device of the “tragic octoroon” used in abolitionist plays and literature – usually a pretty blonde girl with secret African ancestry, forced into sexual slavery until rescued by an abolitionist in an extremely heavy-handed plot twist – but it was extremely effective at freaking out the middle-class white people in the North. “That could be my daughter! We have to stop slavery!” And Europeans were just like “Jesus CHRIST what are Americans even DOING?!” as they frantically wrote letters back home.

*** The Virginian law stated partus sequitur ventrem – the child of an enslaved mother is an enslaved child. Even if they aren’t technically ‘black.’ Because it made Jefferson’s life less awkward.

NB: SLAVERY IS WRONG and it was ALWAYS wrong to enslave people. The fact that the Hemings children were “legally white” – basically a meaningless term anyway – doesn’t mean they “deserved” to be elevated above other enslaved people and freed. It’s just a really good way to shut down the apologists, because they like to set up a fake fantasy system where slavery is totally justified and fair. This is not compatible with reality, particularly in the case of Presidential children.

let’s talk about red flags

fuckmethroughthesheets:

So there are a ton of posts out there – especially from some of our favorite BDSM bloggers – that talk about and list red flags. What they are, what to look for, how to spot them, etc. Lists upon lists. I reblog them often! Knowing what red flags to look for can be helpful and can save someone from lots of pain, damage and heartbreak. There are lots of those red flag posts out there.

This is not one of those posts.

This is not about what red flags to look for. This is not a list of things to avoid. This is not a list of warning signs. This is not about how to spot the red flags. This is a post about what to do if you missed the red flags.

Those who pay attention to my more personal posts may be aware that in the last few months I’ve been working with my therapist to deal with the trauma of being raped last October. (And most of you are probably aware it’s been long, hard, and not really felt like it’s going that well.) Anyway, the long and the short of that point is that the man who raped me was someone I’d been dating for a few months and was someone I thought I could trust, someone I thought I was safe with, someone I thought was a good person.

Or, in other words, I missed all of the red flags.

Me. A person who regularly reads, discusses, and reblogs posts about warning signs and things to look for and red flags to avoid. A person who can rattle the red flags off without even thinking about them. A person who can spot these red flags in someone else’s relationships with no problem. I missed them. I missed the red fucking flags. And I paid for it. And I’m still paying for it.

So what the fuck do you do with that?

Well, I’ll tell you. Don’t blame yourself. Seriously – do. not. blame. yourself. Do not beat yourself up. Don’t sit there and think about how stupid you are. Don’t talk about how this is your fault. Do not do that.

Here’s the thing about red flags. When you’re not the one immediately and emotionally involved in the situation – they seem like the most obvious things in the world. They seem so easy to spot. They seem cut and dry and like giant glaring neon warning signs. You literally sit there and read this shit and think to yourself that stuff like that is so obvious and you’re prepared for anything and there’s no way you could ever possibly miss that. (Despite, in my case, ending up in toxic, abusive relationships more than once.) But when you are the one involved in the relationship? It’s so much messier. It’s so much harder to spot. It’s so much easier to get sucked in and caught up and not know how to get yourself out once the red flags start to seem more obvious.

That’s the thing about abusive people. That’s the thing about abusive partners. That’s the thing about dating and being involved with an abusive person. They are really fucking good at this shit. They are manipulative as can be. They are masters of the mindfuck. They have spent years and years practicing this and mastering this and becoming really fucking good at this. They know how to draw you in. They know how to make you care. They know how to trap you and get you in so deep that you feel like you can’t leave. They know how to make you believe their lies and their bullshit and their complete and utter abusive crap. They know. They know.

So my point? It’s not your fault.

If you’re sitting there going back over and over and over your relationship and parsing it and slicing it and studying it and tearing it apart and wondering what you missed and how you didn’t see it and how you could have done this differently… If you’re sitting there blaming yourself? Don’t. Don’t. It is not your fault. It is not your fault. It is so easy to see things in hindsight and to go back over the relationship when you’re not in the moment and caught up in all of it and having to interact with the person abusing you and see all of the things that you missed, and all of the things that were wrong, and all of the things that you should have noticed.

I know how that is. I know how that is. But trust me. It’s not your fault. It. Was. Not. Your. Fault.

So you missed the red flags? I know how that is. I know how that feels. I know the shock waves it sends through your life. And you know what you can do about it? Don’t blame yourself. Seriously, stop it. Stop it! Stop blaming yourself. And then when you’re ready? Talk through it with someone you trust and someone who has your best interests at heart. Look at the things you missed. Set up check-ins for the future so that you can have someone else help you look at situations when you’re in them and help call out red flags.

It sucks to miss the red flags. It will haunt you. I know.
It will make you feel like you did something wrong. You didn’t.
You’ll feel like an idiot. You’re not.
You’ll feel like you deserved it. You didn’t.
You’ll think it’s your fault. It is not your fault.

Really, it’s not. It’s not easy to spot these things when you’re living the red flags every single day. You didn’t do anything wrong. So stop blaming yourself.

theflats:

“When I was doing my residency in New York, a patient came in 18 weeks pregnant and very, very sick. The only way to save her was to terminate the pregnancy. We were in a Catholic hospital … I vividly recall my director of obstetrics and the chairman arguing with the nuns. They said, “Well, the baby’s only 18 weeks, it’s going to die.” They felt very strongly that we could not do anything, but they would be okay with us transferring her to get care elsewhere. The director rode with the patient in the ambulance because he was afraid that she would have seizures. She was in her early 20s, and she already had a kid. That really got to me. How could we let this mom die and leave her child behind when we have the means to take care of her? I said to myself: “I never want my hands tied behind my back like that again.” I used to travel; these days I’m mostly in Georgia and I’m a backup physician in Alabama. In Alabama, my patients tend to be poor and young. The youngest was barely 12. She went to play with a classmate, and there were older boys over … When her guardians brought her in, I was reluctant to take care of her in an outpatient setting because we couldn’t sedate her. I went to the local hospital and said, “She’s just a baby. She’s suffered enough. Please, can we put her to sleep.” Everybody was onboard. Things have changed so much I don’t know if I would be able to get away with that now. The most frustrating thing for me, especially in the Southeast, is seeing so many women who are not empowered to take care of themselves. Especially women of color. You hear things like “I was told I’m too young for an IUD” when we know that’s not true. They need to know what their options are. I’m Haitian-American, and the part of me that is extremely cynical wants to say, Well, it’s because these are black women. But I really think it’s a matter of poverty. It just so happens that the face of poverty may be black. A few weeks ago, a woman came in for a medical abortion. As she was about to take the pill, she asked, “Do you think God hates me?” And I said, “No, he doesn’t hate you.” She said to me: “I tried so hard not to get pregnant. I told my boyfriend to use a condom, but he refused and forced himself on me.” If you overturn Roe v. Wade, what’s going to happen is we’ll go back to the way it was before. Every state for themselves. And best believe that the conservative states are going to try to outdo each other. Poor women will suffer. Poor women will die. There’s a generation of abortion providers who are more willing to be vocal about the impact of these different legislative measures. I tell my learners, “I don’t expect you to provide abortion care, but I want you to support your co-worker if they say, ‘Hey, we need a piece of legislation.’ I want you to stand behind us. But most importantly, I want you to be able to counsel and educate your patient in a way that respects her decision.” If I can train 500 providers who are compassionate and willing to respect and help their patients, I’ve done my job.”

— Anonymous, OB/GYN and a former fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, What Abortion in America Looks Like Right Now (via quigonejinn)

There are a number of people out there whose graves I wanna put roses and tobacco on.

weatheredlaw:

arundelo:

agingwunderkind:

thecringeandwincefactory:

I need to keep a list.

I just found out about this man, Hugh Thompson.

He essentially halted the rape and murder orgy by American soldiers at the village of My Lai in Viet Nam during the Vietnam War by placing his chopper between the civilians and his own soldiers and telling them he’d mow their asses down if they continued the onslaught. He then flew the survivors to military hospitals for care. At least 500 Vietnamese non-combatants were brutally murdered at My Lai by US soldiers before Thompson intervened.

He was vilified by the Army and many of the American people for publicly exposing the Army’s actions at My Lai, and spent the rest of his life with ptsd, alcoholism, and severe nightmare disorder that contributed to his divorce. In other words, his own life was basically ruined by his heroic compassion. He died about 12 years ago at the age of 62 of cancer, and is buried in Lafayette, Louisiana, with full military honors.

He should be remembered.

Hail.

Reblogging this today, fifty years after March 16, 1968.

This L.A. Times op ed by Jon Wiener
also published today includes material from Wiener’s 2000
interview of Hugh Thompson.

Thompson was awarded what’s called a “Distinguished Flying Cross” for his efforts that day, but the reasons for the award were misleading. It claimed that he’d rescued a Vietnamese child caught in the “cross fire” and that he helped to improve relations between America and Vietnamese people. Apparently he threw the citation in the garbage.

He and Lawrence Colburn, one of the two men he was with that day who helped him, remained friends until Thompson’s death. Colburn was at his bedside the day Thompson was removed from life support. Thompson, Colburn, and Glenn Andreotta, Thompson’s other crew member, were all awarded the Soldier’s Medal, Andreotta post-humously. Glenn unfortunately died in combat in Vietnam when he was only 20.

When Thompson and Colburn went back to Vietnam, according to Thompson, some of the women they rescued asked why the people who’d attacked them weren’t there. She wanted to forgive them.

Thompson and Colburn never stopped talking about military ethics or what happened that day.

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I just starting bawling my eyes out

Slavery was a choice though right?

My grandpa lives in clarksdale, Mississippi and HATES white people with a passion. I grew up listening to stories like this. His cousins had to flee to Chicago in the 60s for trying to fight a group of white landowners who wanted to hang them for trying to leave the land they worked on.

Slavery turned into “share cropping” if you kept your slaves ignorant and isolated then they didn’t know they had been freed. This went on well into the 60’s the fucking 60’s these people are still alive dealing with this type of shit in the deep south.

My friend said to “fact check” this and I’m like…black ppl are literally saying they were kept as slaves what is there to fact check. Anyway, sharecropping was still slavery as far as I’m concerned.

I did not know this

I didn’t either and it breaks my heart to see stuff like this. To hear of more darkness that was just swept under the rug like this.

Here’s an article with more information about Mae’s family and her life after she got out, and the Wikipedia article on peon slavery has some general information about it in the twentieth century in the American South.