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Wednesday, 04 November 2009

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Friday, 23 October 2009

  • Health Care is a Feminist Issue

    Have you ever heard of gender rating? I hadn't. Well, not until I found myself without health insurance and searching for information on a topic that had never been all that important before; ah, such a luxury when one is either covered under a parental plan, covered under a student plan, or laboring away in an underpaid and overworked entry level job that happens to provide benefits. When I moved into freelance course writing and research it was, in some ways, very freeing. But that doesn't pay for flu shots, dentistry, Ortho Evra, and all of those other things that you never noticed were covered--until they weren't.

    While shopping for health insurance isn't exactly super fun time, the silver lining in this cloud is that health care is somewhat of an en vogue topic these days. Okay, that's an understatement, I know. But what I'm reading isn't very pretty. So...back to gender rating--or, "my vagina is a pre-existing condition." The National Women's Law Center has a new report on women and health care. NWLC reports that not only do 95% of plans include gender rating--charging more for the plan simply because the applicant is female--but 25 year old women are charged as much as 84% more than men their age. Plans that don't even include maternity coverage! In fact, only 13% of individual plans for 30 year old women include maternity coverage. Furthermore, injuries resulting from domestic violence and/or rape can be considered pre-existing conditions.

    So there it is. The fabulous catch-22 of being young, female, and uncovered. If you don't want to be pregnant and/or don't feel like you have the resources to carry a child to term, chances are you'll have to drive hundreds of miles just to find a doctor who will help you. If you do want to have a healthy pregnancy and carry a baby, chances are you'll have to pay twice as much (if not more) just to have access to an OBGYN and a hospital and if you can't afford that...well, it's really overwhelming and makes you wonder if you have the resources to carry a child to term.

    So, to reiterate: My vagina is not a pre-existing condition.



    via Broadsheet

Monday, 19 October 2009

  • LOL QotD: Keep Your Sexual Obsessions Straight

    This is my LOL Quote of the Day because I really did laugh rather loudly by myself in my house when I read it. A commenter going by the handle "ice9" left a response to crazy lady Debbie Schlussel (a notoriously strange woman with no actual academic/journalistic credibility but somehow manages to make a living out of hating Muslims/Arabs/Terrorists because they're all the same in her weird mind) who is outraged--outraged!--that Disney had the audacity to change Tinkerbell's costume into something other than the cheap Playboy bunny knock-off she's worn since the sixties. The shorter Debbie Schlussel: Tink is totes a lesbian because she's wearing actual clothing. Debbie has a history of crying "teh gayz...they will killz us all!" and this comment by ice9 pretty much nails the crazy conservative pathos that truly believs equal rights will be the death of all that is good and white and American and comfortable:

    You guys can’t even keep your sexual obsessions straight. Just a hint–seeing teh gay everywhere is warping to your credibility. If any.

    These liberals…let me get this straight. They are a tiny population of people, of course, because if they were numerous then, well, the whole “voting for things” exception would apply, and we all know this is a center-right nation led by a hyperliberal so-liberal-it’s-fascist executive and legislative branch. Rather than passing laws, they take other routes to power, which leads them to operate in dread secrecy, because when you look for them, well, they seem to be invisible, somehow camouflaging themselves as red-blooded capitalists who are just trying to feed their families by selling stuff that sells instead of stuff people choose to not buy because it’s too political, just as tobacconists and Honda and Wal Mart and United Health Group do. They try to sneak gayness into our consciousness by manipulating trademarked Disney figures, which are unchangeable national treasures and are covered by the “stuff we like must never change” laws passed under President Reagan. Their nefarious scheme is to make American figures as Tinkerbell, who emigrated from England in 1947, look incrementally more gay so slowly that even gay people don’t notice–some people who are unaware of the plot still refuse even to see the gayness just dripping from her curly-toed wood-sprite shoes and her gayzor, which few Americans know is the same hat that gay Alfred Nobel was wearing when he gave Barack Obama the Pulitzer Prize for gay peace. Then little kids will continue to defy their right-thinkin’ parents and not hate (in a loving way) or taunt (in a free-speeching way) or commit crimes against (but not just because they’re gay) gay people despite the confusion when the gay people turn out to be dumpy middle-aged men and women who were there the whole time, for some reason not wearing curly-toed shoes and green leafy tights. But it’s clearly in the national interest to hate both the wood-sprite gays and the camouflaged-to-look-just-like-the-those-two-women-who-live-together-up-the-street-but-probably-aren’t-gay-because-they-seem-normal-except-for-the-’two-women-who-live-together’-part. Plus it gets votes if peckerwood lunkheads are scared of gays. Or it used to get votes most places, and will again! I say! and still does in the deep South, where the Party of Lincoln has traditionally drawn its support in a way that isn’t racial at all.

    There. Got it.

    I really wish I'd written that myself. I'll just have to settle for a hearty "right on."

    Currently
    Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (Two Disc + BD Live) [Blu-ray]
    By Mae Whitman, Angelica Huston, Raven Symone, Jesse McCartney, Kristen Chenoweth
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Friday, 16 October 2009

abbylyne

  • Visit abbylyne's Xanga Site
    • Name: Abby
    • Birthday: 1/4/1983
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 7/15/2004
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