This Article Was Posted On The 10th August 2021.

This article was posted on the 10th August 2021.

Heres a link to the crowd funding page for Rukhsana Media.

Amen

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and a female by any other pronouns would still be oppressed in a patriarchy

“There are far more intended parents waiting to be matched with a surrogate than there are women available to carry these pregnancies, yet surrogates are taught to view themselves as disposable laborers. A doctor at a clinic in India adds that “for the surrogates it’s mostly the character of the womb that we are interested in. We make sure the surrogates know that they are not genetically related to the baby, they are just the wombs.” … The doctor superimposes a single body part (the womb) over the personhood of the surrogate as a whole being, effectively eliding her subjectivity. 

The surrogates that Pande interviewed referenced their own contributions to the pregnancy, contrasting the level of effort that they were putting into the pregnancies to that of the intended mother, who contributed “only an egg.” The surrogates were thus justified in making kinship claims to the future child … When one surrogate was told that she would have to “reduce” her pregnancy from triplets to twins, she insisted that she would keep the third baby if the intended parents did not want it because it was her blood, if not her genes … While blood does not circulate between the pregnant woman and fetus, the placenta is built from both maternal and fetal blood cells that can migrate between the two, lingering in various organs of the body and potentially impacting a variety of future conditions for the child, such as cancer risk and immune disorders.

This biological connection, however, is often downplayed because it is not genetic. In the Assisted Reproductive Technology industry, genetics are privileged over gestation, and thus the role of the surrogate is cast as that of an incubator who will not affect the appearance, intelligence, or personality of the child. This strict compartmentalization assures intended parents that their choice of surrogate will not impact the quality of their carefully selected genetic material, thus legitimizing cross-racial, cross-class, transnational surrogacy arrangements in ways that benefit the consumers of reproductive technologies. […]

Daisy Deomampo found that the intended parents she interviewed became very attached to the Indian “origin story” of their children, regardless of whether the child was conceived using Indian gametes. Parents returned from Indian with emblems of the country, “flattening out” the specificity of India and its historical and political contexts. [She] argues that parents “conflated the geographic space of India – and the attendant orientalist discourses that construct “Indian-ness” as exotically opposite to Western sensibilities – with the embodiment of the child’s identity through its gestation by an Indian surrogate mother in India” … Simultaneously Other[ing] Indian women’s bodies while incorporating romanticized and potentially colonializing notions of Indian identity or origins for surrogate-born children. 

The idea that reproductive tourists can tap in to the natural resource of Indian’s fertility is also raised … [Despite] India’s birth rate or “fertility surplus” [being] deemed a demographic problem, [it is implied] that the purported “excessive” population, bodies, and fertility of India are always an available commodity for the foreign tourist … An estimated 8-10% of Indian women suffer from infertility and most surrogate mothers have been permanently sterilized … [But] rather than addressing the health care needs of Indian citizens, foreign economic pressure and state intervention have aimed at limiting the fertility of the poor at the same time that the image of fertile Indian surrogates is used to draw in reproductive tourists.”

—Laura Harrison, Brown Bodies, White Babies: The Politics of Cross-Racial Surrogacy

@searchingforproofsthatimwrong here I've elaborated on your hypothesis:

If we ask 50+ TRAs to provide concrete definitions of the terms woman, man, and gender in less than 50 words per term using language at or below a 6th grade reading level, they will be unable to perform this task because they have too wide a variety of definitions for these terms within their online discourse, none of which have a clear, evidence-based, scientific origin.

Now, why a 6th grade reading level? It's because the average US adult can read at a 7th-8th grade reading level, and we want information to be easily understood. And information about sex and gender affects health in many ways.

The ability to understand health information is known as health literacy and don't fuck with me b/c I just wrote an insanely long quality improvement paper on this topic.

 "A number of factors impact health literacy including a patient’s receipt of appropriate written health communication materials, ability to accurately interpret written health-related information, and communication with providers. When patients receive written health communication materials that don’t match their reading level, patient education is not effective. Additionally, when patients have low overall literacy skills but high verbal fluency, their verbal fluency can mask their inability to interpret written information. Potential communication barriers between patients and health care providers created by low health literacy may lead to a variety of negative health outcomes for the patient. For example, such communication barriers have been associated with patients being more likely to be hospitalized."

Source

Basically this can be summarized as TRAs failing to provide definitions in plain language will actively create worse health outcomes for people who cannot understand their reasoning that "asking to define the term woman isn't a scientific question, it's a pHiLOsoPhiCAl one".

Here's a scientific answer:

Woman = Adult. Human. Female.

For Real now what is a gender identity, what are gender roles, what is a gender, what is the difference ?

A definition for each please

I am getting tired of Always Reading how terfs are stupid for conflating those and never getting a straight answer as to what exactly those are.

Gender identity: the individual sense of what gender you are. The reason why can be for various different things. Mine being the drop in gender dysphoria and experience of gender euphoria.

Gender roles: Femininity and masculinity, stereotypes, etc.

Masculinity and femininity are usually seen as types of gender expression within our transgender cult. We don’t think that whether being masculine or feminine has an impact on what someone’s actual gender is and instead as a way of expressing oneself.

The difference is that gender identity isn’t determined by gender roles and that being masc or fem doesn’t have to equate to someone’s gender identity.

Gender identity can simply be how one percieves themselves and/or their body. Gender roles are what’s expected of that gender identity. Gender expression is how the person presents themselves (clothing, pronouns, etc.).

This is how masculine trans women and feminine trans men exist. It’s how they don’t get shunned by every other trans person, even if they are by some.

Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you

No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.

For only $20 you too can fuck Satan

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CREAM. TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK. 

MEMORIZE THE PACKAGING SO YOU MAKE SURE YOU NEVER BUY THIS CREAM FOR YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU LOVE.

This post is about vaginas. My vagina in particular. I get yeast infections pretty regularly, and until recently I was able to afford to see a doctor who could prescribe me fluconazole.

Fluconazole, a drug also known by the brand name Diflucan, is a small pink pill. You take two pills a few days apart from each other to restore balance and harmony to your bountiful folds. I’ve never ever had a bad side effect from taking this pill.

Cut to November 2016. I’m a recent college grad without reliable health care coverage in the process of finding a job. And I’m dealing with a yeast infection. Before I moved out of state, my previous doctor told me about Miconazole. She said it was as effective as the pill and hallelujah, it’s over the counter! I decided to purchase the cream pictured above. This treatment only lasted 3 days, a convenient time frame for my schedule.

The application process was a little messy, and some of the cream came in contact with my vulva and labia. Within 5 minutes every piece of skin that had come in contact with the cream, excluding my hands, was on fire. I wanted to scream it was so painful. I began frantically searching for what I should do online. 

I found a whole forum of people on drugs.com who had experienced something similar. These comments saved me, and these were just on the first page. There were 33 pages total, the earliest dated July 2009.

I was writhing in pain at 2AM when I found this forum (which I found by searching “my vagina burn itch hurts after miconazole” on Google). As soon as I read these comments I threw the devil cream directly into the trash and jumped in the shower. I didn’t feel any actual relief until I reached in and scraped the cream out of me. I paid $17 plus tax on this bullshit, but I could have just as easily ripped up my money or paid someone to not hurt me. 

The moral of the story is that vaginal health care is is completely fucked up because we don’t have access to an over the counter cure for yeast infections that is safe for our bodies and also YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS CREAM EVER.

Reblog to save a vagina.