![phrynozoid:
getsnarly:
fuckyeahsexeducation:
(TW: Forced Sterilization and Rape)
sexxxisbeautiful:
hickies-n-hotpants:
dichotomydestroyingparty:
nbcnews:
Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.
Riddick was never told what was happening. “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said. “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”
Her records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs.
To read more about this story, click here. Dr. Nancy Snyderman’s full broadcast report, ‘State of Shame’, airs Monday, November 7, at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.
holy fuck.
RAGE.
I recently started learning about the history of eugenics and the correlation between the history of birth control in America. It’s some freaky fucking shit I tell you, full of examples of the classism, racism, and ableism rampant in society. How convenient that only poor people/people of color/mentally disabled people were sterilized! /sarcasm/
P.S. If I remember correctly IQ tests were originally used to determine if someone was “feeble-minded” enough to be sterilized.
Reproductive Justice is NOT just about being allowed to have abortions. Forced sterilization is a huge issue as well, that is hardly ever talked about, if even known about. Educate yourself.
THIS is why when people say “The government should make people have to apply for a permit to reproduce!” and “There should be a law that makes it so only college graduates can have kids!” and things like that, I go apeshit. Since when has the government ever done a good job of being in control over people’s lives? Since when do you trust the government to be a good judge of who gets what? Really? You’d put the government in charge of everyone’s reproductive rights and think it wouldn’t turn into a total clusterfuck like everything else?!
Yup. Like another user posted above, the government has already messed with forced sterilization, and it is always targeted mainly against poor women, women of color (particularly indigenous women) and women with emotional and neurological disabilities (the clinical diagnosis of which was “moron”, for those who try to avoid ableist language). And these aren’t anomalies: the latter was legitimized in the Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell, which defended coerced sterilization on the grounds it halted things like “promiscuity”, and was applauded by eugenicists. Eugenicists, remember, advocate for racial cleansing—the most infamous example being carried out by Nazis against Jews, Slavs, the Roma, and gays, to the tune of six million people.
Excellent point about reproductive choice being the right to have children as much as it is about not having children. In looking around the Internet for sources for the above paragraph, I came upon the distinction of eugenics into two categories:
Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.[41] Negative eugenics is aimed at lowering fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.[41] Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive. Abortion by fit women was illegal in Nazi Germany.[42] via Wikipedia.
Thinking now of the ways housing, education, and food access determine who is considered “fit” and how “fit” has little to do with genetics, and more with policy.
Incidentally, OKCupid has a freaky-ass “match question” asking if the individual taking the test thinks sterilization is a good idea. Who in the hell answers that in the affirmative? Have two people found romance over that? *shudder*](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/joryuu/15847821367/1/tumblr_lub0oxwVtu1qm4we9)
phrynozoid:
getsnarly:
fuckyeahsexeducation:
(TW: Forced Sterilization and Rape)
sexxxisbeautiful:
hickies-n-hotpants:
dichotomydestroyingparty:
nbcnews:
Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.
Riddick was never told what was happening. “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said. “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”
Her records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs.
To read more about this story, click here. Dr. Nancy Snyderman’s full broadcast report, ‘State of Shame’, airs Monday, November 7, at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.
holy fuck.
RAGE.
I recently started learning about the history of eugenics and the correlation between the history of birth control in America. It’s some freaky fucking shit I tell you, full of examples of the classism, racism, and ableism rampant in society. How convenient that only poor people/people of color/mentally disabled people were sterilized! /sarcasm/
P.S. If I remember correctly IQ tests were originally used to determine if someone was “feeble-minded” enough to be sterilized.
Reproductive Justice is NOT just about being allowed to have abortions. Forced sterilization is a huge issue as well, that is hardly ever talked about, if even known about. Educate yourself.
THIS is why when people say “The government should make people have to apply for a permit to reproduce!” and “There should be a law that makes it so only college graduates can have kids!” and things like that, I go apeshit. Since when has the government ever done a good job of being in control over people’s lives? Since when do you trust the government to be a good judge of who gets what? Really? You’d put the government in charge of everyone’s reproductive rights and think it wouldn’t turn into a total clusterfuck like everything else?!
Yup. Like another user posted above, the government has already messed with forced sterilization, and it is always targeted mainly against poor women, women of color (particularly indigenous women) and women with emotional and neurological disabilities (the clinical diagnosis of which was “moron”, for those who try to avoid ableist language). And these aren’t anomalies: the latter was legitimized in the Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell, which defended coerced sterilization on the grounds it halted things like “promiscuity”, and was applauded by eugenicists. Eugenicists, remember, advocate for racial cleansing—the most infamous example being carried out by Nazis against Jews, Slavs, the Roma, and gays, to the tune of six million people.
Excellent point about reproductive choice being the right to have children as much as it is about not having children. In looking around the Internet for sources for the above paragraph, I came upon the distinction of eugenics into two categories:
Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.[41] Negative eugenics is aimed at lowering fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.[41] Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive. Abortion by fit women was illegal in Nazi Germany.[42] via Wikipedia.
Thinking now of the ways housing, education, and food access determine who is considered “fit” and how “fit” has little to do with genetics, and more with policy.
Incidentally, OKCupid has a freaky-ass “match question” asking if the individual taking the test thinks sterilization is a good idea. Who in the hell answers that in the affirmative? Have two people found romance over that? *shudder*
(via mnome)
![Occupy Oakland demonstrators shield themselves from an exploding tear gas grenade (REUTERS/Stephen Lam)
[A] city’s civic buildings—paid for by previous and current generations of citizens—DOES belong to the people, NOT the government, and certainly NOT the police. The people of a city OWN that city via the taxes they are forced to pay for the privilege of being a municipal shareholder. And, so we’re clear, they would have been providing “compensation” in the form of all the community care they were going to administer in and through that building—care the city Oakland has failed to provide to its citizens. …[T]his was not theft. No one was looking to sell, profit, or personally gain from the Occupying of an empty, wasted, civic space. This act was many, many members of the Oakland community attempting to turn a squandered, empty building into a community center where they could offer and coordinate help for homeless folks that have been abandoned by the leaders of Oakland. This act was a pure representation of selflessness. No one person would have personally benefitted from the using of a wasted resource such as the convention center. The whole intent was to create a facility where citizens that wanted to could volunteer and donate their time and skills to helping their fellow humans. Occupy needed nothing from the city, except a reasonable response to a compassionate, pragmatic solution to a complex problem. Occupiers did a fantastic job of shining a light on the fact that city leaders and business owners are more concerned with protecting the emptiness of Oakland’s buildings than they are living, breathing people that are the most in need of compassion and assistance. Mayor Quan, do buildings really matter more than the most vulnerable lives? (Mhris Carco)](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/joryuu/16711595104/1/tumblr_lyks5y2Qpm1qaovgp)
