i don’t see it enough but i absolutely love black women being adored and loved and worshipped. I love when black women get lovey dovey poetry written for them and the way their lovers eyes light up and get dewy when they see her. I love their lovers being in awe and not knowing what to say because just looking at her leaves them breathless
After six years of infuriating Republican obstructionism in Olympia, the Reproductive Parity Act passed last session. A lot of the talk around the bill focused on the part that requires all insurers who cover maternity care to also cover abortion. And rightfully so. That provision expanded abortion access to greater number of Washingtonians, giving a greater number of women control over their own goddamned reproductive health choices. But the bill also included some preventative care measures that didn’t get as much press.
Namely: As of January 1, 2019, all Washingtonians with state-regulated insurance can now pick up over-the-counter contraceptives for free at their in-network pharmacies, according to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner. Those contraceptives include “condoms, spermicides, emergency contraceptives, and sponges.”
So—if you’re not on Medicaid, and if you don’t work for a mega-company that self-insures—then you can just stroll into a Walgreens (or a Rite Aid, or whatever pharmacy is in your network), walk up to the pharmacy counter, and ask for some Plan B, some condoms, or whatever a “sponge” is, and they’ll give it to you for freeeeeee at point of service.
Although many of the details of this horrifying incident remain unknown, news of the case has conjured up significant outrage, especially among sexual assault and disability rights advocates who want to know how this could have happened and what actions will be taken to stop similar tragedies in the future.
Chief among their concerns is the troubling treatment of this story, particularly among the media who have been reporting this incident as a “possible sexual assault.”
“It is unacceptable that the media isn’t covering this for what it is—rape. She wasn’t ‘allegedly assaulted,’ she was raped,” Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, told Rewire.News in an email.
“I think it continues to indicate a media that is still largely uncomfortable seeing disabled people, as well, people. It’s further emphasized by the journalists covering the issues neglecting to interview disabled women who work on these issues, forcing it to be perceived through a nondisabled lens,” Cokley continued.
Of course, this heartbreaking incident is not surprising to many people with disabilities. As Imani Barbarin aptly pointed out on Twitter, “83% of disabled women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime.”
This is why it’s important to talk about disabilities when talking about sex education and why sex education programs specifically for people with disabilities is so important
I feel like I’m going to go to my grave without figuring out if Dr. Horrible is deliberately a condemnation of the geek-flavored version of toxic masculinity that would, years later, play a significant part in the resurgence of open white nationalism and the like in America, or if Joss Whedon is just a dumbass who wrote an extended callout post for himself on accident
