RIP: Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich died, and the world is a little less poetic – and a little less political – as a result.

Translations
By Adrienne Rich

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she’s a woman of my time

obsessed

with Love, our subject:
we’ve trained it like ivy to our walls
baked it like bread in our ovens
worn it like lead on our ankles
watched it through binoculars as if
it were a helicopter
bringing food to our famine
or the satellite
of a hostile power

I begin to see that woman
doing things: stirring rice
ironing a skirt
typing a manuscript till dawn

trying to make a call
from a phonebooth

The phone rings unanswered
in a man’s bedroom
she hears him telling someone else
Never mind. She’ll get tired.
hears him telling her story to her sister
who becomes her enemy
and will in her own time
light her own way to sorrow

ignorant of the fact this way of grief
is shared, unnecessary
and political

WI Prison Law & GID

A while back, a federal judge here in Wisconsin ruled that the 2005 Sex Change Prevention Act (really? was that necessary?) was deemed unconstitutional because it represents:

“deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” because it denies hormone therapy without regard to those needs or doctors’ judgments.

The U.S. 7th District Court of Appeals upheld his ruling last year, and just this week, the Supreme Court turned it down for review.

Which means, overall, that trans prison inmates in WI, IL, and IN can get medical care for their transition while in prison.

Julia Sweeney Does Sex Ed

Hysterical, and probably even funnier for those of you who parent.

It does make me wonder if there is something more like a sex education appropriate video of humans having sex that isn’t porn per se. There should be.

(Thanks to my friend Keith for this one.)

Firsts.

A trans guy is running for City Council on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (from whence come all things progressive).

“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”

Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.

Of course that really means those who are out as trans, which means there are probably others no one knows are trans who are holding office.

Not Just Homos

What’s interesting to me is that it’s never just “sexual deviants” that are targeted by people who are homophobic. You’ll notice the same crowd goes after women who expect to make decisions about their own sexualities and bodies, and in general are anti-sex. This little blog, Chew on This, in predicting the dearth of accurate sex info if someone like Santorum is elected, is spot on. The laws governing who can own, buy or sell sex toys often go hand in glove with laws that govern other aspects of sexuality, whether it’s birth control or sex work or homosexuality.

Meds for Women

It’s pretty ridiculous that most clinical trial leaders effectively ignore the fact that women absorb and metabolize drugs completely differently than men, especially since, according to this study, women use an average of five prescription drugs compared to less than four for men — and that’s not even counting their slutty prescription contraceptives. In 100% of the study’s clinical trials, women failed to take prescriptions as directed, and were often not prescribed correct dosages to begin with. The study focused on cardiovascular disease — the number one killer of women in the U.S. — and diabetes, since more than half of diabetics are women. If more women than men are dying from these diseases, how come their antidotes are still tailored to men’s bodies?

asks this Jezebel article, and it’s about goddamned time. Most clinical studies are done assuming the patient is a testosterone-dominant, 200 lb. person. If you are not, your meds aren’t accurate.

No to Urban Outfitters

So Urban Outfitters was selling a card that said:

Jack and Jill went up the hill / So Jack could see Jilly’s fanny / But Jack got a shock / and an eyeful of cock / Because Jill was a closet tranny

Classy. Someone brought it up (and snagged a copy of the image) on reddit, and then HuffPo picked it up.

Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me at all: the fake hipster of UO is already well-known, and despite how much you might like their stuff, their owner donates your green to guys like – Rick Santorum.

So no UO for me, no matter how fast they try to disappear this one.