A Body Image, Body Politics, and Body Justice News Roundup

 

Justice

• Bust magazine reports “In this morning’s 6-2 Supreme Court decision, the crime of reckless domestic violence and abuse is now considered a misdemeanor that justifies firearms possession restriction. What does that mean? It means closing one of the many gaping loopholes in gun control legislation and cracking down on violent domestic crime. Most importantly, it means safer homes for those most at risk: women (especially women of color), LGBTQ+ folks, and children.” Another Feminist win for the Supreme Court 
• Employers and employees in Washington D.C. are legally prohibited from referring to a transgender employee or coworker by the “wrong” pronouns or asking “personal questions” about their gender identity, according to the city’s Office of Human Rights (OHR). D.C. Will Fine You For Calling A Transgender Person The ‘Wrong’ Pronouns

LGBTQ+ Intersections

• I’ve started referring to myself as gendervague, a term coined within the autistic community to refer to a specifically neurodivergent experience of trans/gender identity. …  Despite the common intersection of autistic and trans identity, however, much of the trans movement rejects neurodiversity and by extension, many disabled trans people. In the rush to affirm the validity of trans identities and experiences, trans movements frequently practice disavowal of neurodivergent and other disabled people. The common refrain, “Being transgender isn’t a mental illness, so there’s nothing wrong with us!” results in real harm to all people with mental disabilities, but especially those of us at this intersection. Gendervague: At the Intersection of Autistic and Trans Experiences by Lydia Z. X. Brown

• “Now that I understand Bipolar Disorder, I can identify key points in my life where I was manic, where I would completely redo my wardrobe, take on a new persona, pick up a new hobby and abruptly drop it all. It’s scary and embarassing that many of my quirks were an illness I didn’t know I had. No one knew. And my memory of my manic moments is terrifyingly blotchy. Manic Cai is charming, funny and magnetic. Depressive Cai can be all those things but not as effortlessly. Depressive Cai overthinks almost everything and is incredibly insecure about stuff that doesn’t even matter to anyone else.” – Double Vision: The Many Faces of Bipolar Disorder by Cairo Amani

Faith

• A group of over 50 Muslim clerics in Pakistan have issued a fatwa, or religious decree, saying transgender men and women have the right to marry under Islamic law, and have urged the state to provide protection and ensure equal rights for them. The move has been cautiously welcomed in Pakistan, though activists say aspects of the law need to change in order to protect the country’s shunned transgender community known as “hijra,” or “khawaja sara.”
• Pope Francis said on Sunday that Christians and the Roman Catholic Church should seek forgiveness from homosexuals for the way they had treated them. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome from Armenia, he also said the Church should ask forgiveness for the way it has treated women, for turning a blind eye to child labor and for “blessing so many weapons” in the past.
• “The terrorist attack at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shook my world. Occurring on the heels of the McKinney Pool incident, the Baltimore uprising. and Rachel Dolezal, I didn’t believe any event could make my summer go from bad to worse. … These debates were interrupted when one woman did the unthinkable. Filmmaker and activist Bree Newsome (with assistance from James Ian Tyson) scaled a flagpole at the South Carolina state capital to remove the confederate battle flag on June 27, 2015.” –A Conversation with Bree Newsome: Reflecting on her historic action, one year later by Erin Logan for Blavity

Identities Art & Culture

• “Landing a steady job in today’s economy isn’t easy. But if you’re transgender, it’s nearly impossible. Just look at the numbers: More than 44% of transgender people are unemployed. And those lucky enough to have a job are four times more likely than the rest of the population to earn less than $10,000 a year.” For Mary Angel Hernandez, a 25-year old trans woman, this is reality. 
• To Bob Costas, the sight of Muhammad Ali as a slow-moving middle-aged man with a pronounced tremor—who could still speak at the time, but only faintly—represented the saddest of all the sad possible endings to his remarkable story, as disability usually does to the nondisabled. But to me, a 12-year-old disabled girl watching the 1996 [Olympic] opening ceremonies at home with her mom and sister, the sight of Ali up there, proudly, in front of the world, was amazing. It made me feel like my irregular body didn’t require an explanation or an apology. – Don’t pity Muhammad Ali: Tributes are no place for ableism by Krystal Farmer for Fusion

• My absolute new favorite podcast Racist Sandwich features a compelling conversation with Dr. Kate Cairns, on Food and Femininity, the book she coauthored with Josée Johnston, came out last year. She talks about “her research on how foodwork—the researching, buying, and preparation of food—plays into modern ideas of what it means to be a good, responsible woman. She talks about what she learned after interviewing more than a hundred women for her study, and about how race and class inform the way people moralize women’s food choices for themselves and their families.”
• Taylor, Gina, an Anonymous respondent, and Rivolta all have different backgrounds and relationships to Islam and Muslim culture, but they are able to use style as form of activism while also celebrating their culture as Muslims.- 4 Queer Muslims Tell Their Story through Style for Qwear