The Great Comet of 1811. Uranography, or A Description of the Heavens. 1850.
“bodies associated with cis women are harshly stigmatized, made taboo, and policed as part of misogyny, often in violent ways or with the threat of violence” and “not all women have vaginas and not everyone with a vagina is a woman” and “trans peoples’ bodies are harshly stigmatized, made taboo, and policed as part of transphobia, often in violent ways or with the threat of violence” are not mutually exclusive facts and in fact all of these things are deeply interlinked, and should not be used as gotchas! against each other
Tfw u realize you’ve always said you don’t want kids bc deep down you know you’re going to off yourself eventually and don’t want to leave children motherless ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
WIC has more restrictions and guidelines than food stamps. Most of the people I know that have it, still run out of formula for their babies every month and spend money they don’t have to get more formula. The fact this asshole is trying to take it away angers me. What are these parents supposed to do? What if a woman can’t breastfeed? We’re in the millions range of extra money spent to make his wife and kid cushiony in NY because they don’t want to live in Washington. If they can’t make simple sacrifices for his presidency then why do the poor have to sacrifice their livelihood?
Okay, so here’s the situation: the majority of women can physiologically breastfeed but we make it so cumbersome, so stressful, so EXPENSIVE to breastfeed in America that lactating parents living in poverty literally cannot afford to give their babies the free food that comes out of their body.
25% of humans in America who give birth return to work within TWO WEEKS of the birth of their child. Do you know what two weeks postpartum looks like? It looks like you’re fucking exhausted, you baby isn’t sleeping, you’re still sitzing your vulva because GOD FORBID SOMETHING TOUCH IT, you’re probably still continuously bleeding (lochia), and it’s a good day if you managed to shower OR wear pants.
When you’re forced back to work, your boss may be required to allow you adequate time to express milk for your newborn you’re paying $1800 each month to put in daycare (really, that’s how much it costs where I live). Not all employers are required to do this, but we’ll assume yours is required and compliant for the sake of this exercise.
The problem with these breaks is that they’re unpaid. Pumping takes time, anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes and you need to do it at least every 2-3 hours to maintain your milk supply. Every minute you’re expressing milk for the child you shouldn’t have to be away from, you’re calculating how late you’ll have to stay to make up the hours, adding time to your (already astronomical) daycare costs.
The longer you’re doing this, the more stress you’re feeling about the situation. Unfortunately, the hormones you produce when you experience stress suppress the hormones your body needs for your milk to “let down” and flow into your pump to feed your baby tomorrow.
As time goes on, you find you can’t afford to express milk as often as your body needs to maintain your supply. You’re frustrated and tired and formula is expensive, so you rely on WIC to help you.
Now, the federal government COULD have provided you with a national parental leave system that would have allowed you stay home. It could have provided you with a lactation specialist to help you breastfeed. It did neither of those things because the federal government doesn’t actually care if you and your baby are feeding in the way you would choose. Instead, they’ll give you enough vouchers to pay for some of the (really, truly) very expensive formula that is now the only option readily available to you and the nutritional option ranked lowest by the WHO for infant feeding.
But, now, the program—WIC—that is supposed to pay for your baby’s formula is being cut. WIC would help feed your child until their 5th birthday, but the same federal government that threw you under the bus while you were pregnant, refused to allow a national parental leave system, and wouldn’t pay for a lactation counsellor is now cutting your basic nutrition assistance too.
Cutting WIC is a huge fucking deal and is part of a larger, more sinister plot to not give a single fuck about families living in poverty.
FYI Shia LaBeouf’s “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US” exhibit was shut down today because so many neo-nazi, white supremacist fucks went to his exhibit to harass him, a Jewish person, and use his art project to promote their hate. It created a public safety hazard for the museum and they shut down what was supposed to be a 4 year project.
Preschool in a Nursing Home 'Transforms' Elderly Residents
Called the Intergenerational Learning Center, the preschool is located within Providence Mount St. Vincent, a senior care center in West Seattle. Five days a week, the children and residents come together in a variety of planned activities such as music, dancing, art, lunch, storytelling or just visiting.
And now this incredible place is about to have its own film. Called “Present Perfect,” it was shot over the course of the 2012-2013 school year by filmmaker Evan Briggs, who is also an adjunct professor at Seattle University. Funded completely out of her own pocket and shot by her alone, Briggs has now launched a Kickstarter to fund the editing of the movie. She has more than $45,000 of her $50,000 goal with 15 days to go.
Residents of “the Mount,” Briggs said, did a “complete transformation in the presence of the children. Moments before the kids came in, sometimes the people seemed half alive, sometimes asleep. It was a depressing scene. As soon as the kids walked in for art or music or making sandwiches for the homeless or whatever the project that day was, the residents came alive.”
The kids, she said, took everything in stride. She talked of a moment at the beginning of the film trailer when a young boy, Max, is meeting an elderly man named John. John has to repeatedly ask Max his name, calling him Mack, Matt and Match. “That scene actually went on far longer that what you see in the trailer. But Max was just so patient, he just kept repeating his name over and over.”
Interestingly, the parents of the students don’t send their kids to the Intergenerational Learning Center primarily for the experience with the seniors. “It’s got a great reputation and great teachers,” said Briggs. But parents of kids who were in the class that she embedded herself in for the school year now tell her they see the benefit of the model. “One father told me that he especially sees it now that his own parents are aging.”
She named the film “Present Perfect” she said, as a reference to the fact that these two groups of people — the preschoolers, who have almost no past and so much future and the elderly who such rich past but very little future — really only have a few years of overlap in their lives.
“It’s also about being in the present moment,” Briggs said, “something so many adults struggle with.”
Briggs said the moments between the kids and the residents “sweet, some awkward, some funny — all of them poignant and heartbreakingly real.”
Briggs hopes her film will open a conversation about aging in America. She writes on her Kickstarter, “Shooting this film and embedding myself in the nursing home environment also allowed me to see with new eyes just how generationally segregated we’ve become as a society. And getting to know so many of the amazing residents of the Mount really highlighted the tremendous loss this is for us all.”
She called the preschool a “genius” idea that is “well within our reach” on a larger scale and hopes the idea expands to other schools around the country. “It’s a great example of how we integrate the elderly into society.”