That Feminist Dyke

Sign it guys!

mindovermatterzine:

[Trigger Warning: Involuntary hospitalization, medical abuse, unsafe restraint, PTSD]

The Jimmy Savile Broadmoor scandal shows how important it is for us to protect vulnerable people on mental health wards. Yet Government has cut the only survey that checks how safe people feel in mental health hospitals. All of us know someone with a mental illness-we need to know our relatives and friends’ safety is taken seriously.

29 year old John* from Plymouth explains why his traumatic experiences in hospital mean he is supporting the No Silence campaign:

“When I was 18, I was hospitalised for mental illness. It should have been a therapeutic environment for me – but instead I endured experiences that left me feeling like I was being punished for my mental illness.

Being forcibly injected with medication was particularly traumatic. The nurses weren’t properly trained – they didn’t know how to restrain someone without physically hurting them. I was pinned down, face to the floor, my hands held behind my back.

It dredged up memories of a childhood trauma when I’d been treated in the same way, which really made the situation even more terrifying for me. It made my mental illness even worse and left me feeling very institutionalised. 

I certainly didn’t feel safe in hospital – experiences like mine must be heard and acted upon, not swept under the carpet.  That’s why I’m backing the No Silence campaign.”

Please sign up to this petition right now and urge the Health Secretary to reintroduce the inpatient survey for mental health patients – without these important checks many more cases like John’s will go on unmonitored. 

*John’s name has been changed to protect his identity. 

punjabi-rani:

“Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé just spent a year prison in Cameroon for sending this SMS to another man: I’m very much in love w/u.

Roger has a new hearing on Monday, but he’s facing two more years in a jail where he faced daily abuse from guards and horrific health conditions. Homosexuality is still illegal in Cameroon, but President Paul Biya and the Minister of Justice could put a stop to this right now by freeing Roger and declaring a moratorium on this discrimanatory law. President Biya has been swayed in the past by international pressure and knows that Cameroon’s reputation is at stake.

We have just a few days to raise a massive outcry and keep Roger from going back to jail.”

stalkofwheat:

genderqueer:

“Caster Semenya was a world champion - then she was sidelined for 11 months of invasive gender testing because she was too fast and too muscular. She’s back in time for the 2012 Olympics, but now there’s a new rule targeting women who are “too good” at sport to be “real” women.

This rule violates everything the Olympics are about. Seeing people achieve the very fastest, highest, strongest limits of their sport is an inspiration for tens of millions of people globally - to work hard and love what you do. This new rule tells every kid watching the Olympics that you don’t just have to work hard, you have to look “right”.

With only a few days before the Olympics start, with all eyes turning to London, we have to show the International Olympic Committee that not even they have the right to tell someone that who they are is wrong - that there is no such thing as “playing like a girl”.”

And that men are better than women.

redefiningbodyimage:

Overview:

“There is controversy as to the existence of effective obesity treatments, the ethical implications of promoting treatments for obesity that do not have long-term follow up data and may have contraindications, and concern that APA’s proposed development of Clinical Treatment Guidelines for Obesity may contribute to the structural and institutional discrimination and stigmatization of people of higher weights.”

Lorena Escalera died in a fire at her apartment building in Brooklyn

Hundreds of people have signed a petition to the New York Times saying it ‘sexualised’ the death of a transgender woman in a report this weekend.

The petition, hosted on the Care2 petition website, said the report “sensationalised” the death of Lorena Escalera.

Ms Escalera, who was 25, was declared dead at the scene after an apartment building fire in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.

The New York Times ran a piece on her death which said in its opening sentence she was “curvaceous, and she often drew admiring glances in the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood where she was known to invite men for visits to her apartment”.

Ms Escalera’s body was discovered after a fire broke out in the early hours of Saturday morning last week.

The report said that in the area, “many recalled a young and friendly woman”. While the artcile itself used female pronouns throughout, one neighbour said “For a man, he was gorgeous” and recalled her “hourglass” figure.

The petition reads: “On May 12 the New York Times ran a piece about a suspicious fire in Brooklyn where trans woman of color Lorena Escalera sadly died. Far from focusing on the facts of the case, the report included sensationalistic and sexualizing descriptions of her as “curvacious” and noted her “hourglass figure.”

“GLAAD has brought this matter to the NYT’s attention already, whereby you called it a “poor choice of words” as though that ended the matter. At a time when anti-trans sentiment is high and sexualization of trans people still means they are denied basic civil rights, this is not good enough.

“We the undersigned ask that the NYT print an apology acknowledging why the story was so deeply offensive, and that it highlight the prejudice and discrimination trans people face in all spheres of life.”

Carolyn Ryan, the New York Times Metro Editor had said: “We typically try to capture the personal stories of those whose lives are lost in a fire, and we sought to do so in this case. We certainly did not mean any disrespect to the victim or those who knew her. But, in retrospect, we should have shown more care in our choice of words.”

GLAAD criticised the article this week: “The decision by writers Al Baker and Nate Schweber to call her “curvaceous” in the first sentence was not a poor choice of words. It was a poor choice of focus. […] Saying that Lorena was “called” Lorena, even though that is exactly how police identified her, was not a poor choice of words. It was a disrespectful jab at her identity as a trans woman, by implying that she wasn’t really Lorena.”

It added that it was clear that the kind of personal information mentioned in the article “was included in order to “spice up” the story by exploiting Lorena’s status as a transgender woman – not to actually inform readers about her life”.

Currently, [almost 1,000] people have signed the petition.

numol:

please sign and pass this around as much as possible:

Self-defense is not a crime.

Surviving is not a crime.

And yet, in the city of Minneapolis, a woman has been convicted of exactly that. CeCe McDonald, a young trans woman, was convicted of manslaughter. Manslaughter, in this case, meaning the act of defending herself from her attackers. Several men attacked her, with the obvious intent to kill, on the basis of her race and gender identity. In the act of protecting her own life, she killed one; and was charged with murder.

As if this was not enough, the judge in her case was quite obviously biased against her from the start. He selectively excluded evidence that could cast her attacker in a negative light, while permitting evidence that cast her in a negative light. As such, she accepted a plea bargain, down from forty years. And she was sentenced to over three years in a men’s prison.

A woman was sentenced to a men’s prison, for the crime of defending herself from someone who intended to kill her. In such a place, she will almost certainly face more of the same, and worse.

Please, reverse this decision. Pardon her. Let justice prevail.

[ via @Free_CeCe’s retweet of https://twitter.com/#!/ihatehackney/status/198405894793478146 ]

contact info for Gov. Dayton (link):

Mailing Address:

Office of the Governor
130 State Capitol
75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55155

Other ways to reach our office:

Telephone: 651-201-3400 
Toll Free: 800-657-3717 
Minnesota Relay 800-627-3529 
Fax: 651-797-1850 
Contact the Governor’s Office

some online free faxing places:

• http://www.gotfreefax.com (up to 2 a day for free)
• http://faxzero.com (allegedly up to 2 a day for free but one of those usually causes an error)
• http://www.myfax.com/free (up to 2 a day for free)