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

International Politics

• Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-Wen just apologized to the indigenous people of Taiwan for 400 years of brutal violating indigenous people’s rights. She is the first leader with indigenous heritage. Protestors remain outside of the Presidential office to protest the continued marginalization of indigenous people.

 

• Protest art is far from uncommon in the neighborhood surrounding the University of Chile—students have spent most of the past two months on strike protesting for educational reform, and have decorated their neighborhoods appropriately. Yet, in the predominantly Catholic country, one thing certainly is uncommon: pro-choice art.

 

U.S. Elections

• When the deputy sheriff’s patrol cruiser pulled up beside him as he walked down Broad Street at sunset last August, Martee Flournoy, a 32-year-old black man, was both confused and rattled. He had reason: In this corner of rural Georgia, African-Americans are arrested at a rate far higher than that of whites. But the deputy had not come to arrest Mr. Flournoy. Rather, he had come to challenge Mr. Flournoy’s right to vote.

 

• On August 1, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland struck down a North Dakota law requiring photo IDs in order to vote, ruling that the law unfairly burdens the Native American voters who comprise one-fourth of the state’s electorate.
  
   

 

Environmental Racism

• Youth from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are running 2000 miles to deliver a petition to lawmakers. They are asking them to stop an oil pipeline that risks polluting their ancestral lands. Sign their petition: www.change.org/RezpectOurWater

 

• “Flint, Michigan hasn’t yet recovered from the dangerous water pollution that caught the nation’s attention, but now the city has another problem — garbage. Flint suspended its trash pickup services indefinitely Monday as the mayor and city council try to come to an agreement about which company the city should contract. The last garbage contract expired Friday, and without a decision on who to go with, there’s no one to pick up Flint’s roughly 100,000 people’s garbage.”

 

#Say Her Name

• The videos that preceded the deaths of these young mothers have continued to replay themselves in my mind, and as they do, I feel compelled to say out loud what many will not want to hear: Korryn Gaines and Loreal Tsingine were both executed for refusing to lay their bodies at the feet of slave catchers and Indian Killers. – On Korryn Gaines, Loreal Tsingine and Refusing to Surrender for Black Girl Dangerous

 

• For the second time this month, we’re reporting on the murder of a Black trans woman in America. This time, I’m sorry to say that it was 25 year old Dee Whigham of Shubuta, Mississippi. She’s at least the 16th trans person murdered in America this year, and continues the trend of mostly Black trans women being victims of violence.

 

• Police violence against black women is actively erased from larger narratives around state violence. Korryn Gaines was the ninth black woman shot and killed by police this year, illustrating clearly that not only does police violence impact black women at a disproportionate rate, but that as caretakers and providers for black children, the risk of extreme trauma and injury—even death—extends to the children of black women too. …We ought to ask ourselves: Where is the support for these women? Why are their deaths not given their due?- Korryn Gaines and the Erasure of Violence Against Black Women

 

Identity

• “This is the country of my ancestors. It includes the fandango—music that takes Spanish instruments and plays them with African style, songs like ‘La Bamba’ that trace their way back to slavery and still influence music today, and a Mexican president with both Spanish and African ancestry. This is my history, but no one is talking to us about it,” wrote Daniel as he reflected on the Afro-Mexican unit our class had just completed. – Rethinking Identity: Afro-Mexican History

 

 

LGBTQ+ 

• Seattle Bans Gay Conversion Therapy. Five states, the District of Columbia, Miami and Cincinnati have also banned the widely discredited practice.

 

• Brazilian model Lea T will become the first transgender woman to participate, in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which are set to begin on Aug. 5.

 

• On Thursday, Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, introduced the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act, which would provide funding for sex-ed teacher training and grants for education programs that address the needs of LGBTQ young people. – Senate Bill Would Require Sex Ed to be LGBTQ-Inclusive, Medically Accurate

 

Mind/Body/Sexuality

• “Regardless of who we are or are wanting to have sex with– or if we want to have sex at all– sexuality remains an undercurrent in how we value and honor people and are treated in the larger world, from strangers to friends.’ Caleb Luna discusses the cultural capital of desirability for The Body Is Not An Apology

 

• [I]t’s so difficult for millions of girls and women to receive accurate ADHD diagnoses, if any; not only can ADHD can look like depression, OCD, and anxiety disorders (and vice versa), but psychiatrists, parents and educators are less likely to suspect that a well-behaved girl—let alone a high-achieving woman—could be struggling with a condition associated with boys who maintain gym-class-dodgeball levels of hyperactivity at all times. – ‘I Thought I Was Stupid’: The Hidden Struggle for Women with ADHD

 

• Conceived by product engineers and designers of color for Vox Media’s Hackathon, Tōnr is a new web application with filters that showcase and highlight the richness and beauty of darker complexions. – My black is beautiful. That’s why I edited my photo using new filters for people of color.

 

 

Pop Culture & Representation

• “I rediscovered a love for stories reading with my son. But, when I became a dad I found it difficult to find culturally diverse children’s books for my son. I feel that telling stories like Furqan’s First [Flat Top] is a way for me to do both.“

 

• For the many Asian-American women who grew up devouring Ann M. Martin’s “The Baby-Sitters Club” series, the name Claudia Kishi has a special place in their hearts. … The fact that Claudia fully embraced her artistic side, dressed her personality and was not studious or academically-minded had many readers cheering for her. – Looking Back on Claudia Kishi 30 Years After the Debut of ‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ 

• “The Brujas, a crew of female skateboarders, have gathered regularly there for more than two years, but they still tend to turn heads. Even as they have become fixtures in the local skateboarding community, the young women — all of them from ethnic minorities, most from Upper Manhattan or the Bronx — are frequently greeted with catcalling and rubbernecking.”