Oh hi! Hello! Molly’s currently taking control of the entire state of Kansas which she’s going to excavate, build a giant mountain out of, and build a throne on in order to assume her predestined role as Vampire Slayer/Monarch, so expect her back on the roundup next week. I was actually planning the same thing in Missouri but I don’t have a bulldozer so here I am. I’m currently reading Gender Trouble all the way through for the first time (including the painstaking deconstruction of all the psychoanalytic theories of gender) so this week’s roundup will focus on things that seem pretty much fine but are actually spiraling fiery hellplaces of chaos and intricacy when you really get in there and read the Wikipedia articles for Lacan and Saussure instead of skimming over those paragraphs while grimacing and squinting.
a truly important image
The main thing people made infographics and image macros out of this week was that health insurance companies are required to cover contraception and other reproductive health services effective August 1. I want to take this opportunity to blame graphic designers for convincing Americans that looking at a fun flowchart or cutesy graph is all you need to do to be well-versed on an important political or social issue. Fuck you, graphic designers! So two things: it only means* copay-free reproductive health coverage if you’re ALREADY INSURED for healthcare AND prescription drug medication, and (get ready, you’ve never heard me say this before ever) people who don’t identify as “women” also use these services!
stop saying "gay is the new black" just stop it
Another thing people clicked “like” on this week was the backlash against Chik-Fil-A which good lord baby jesus I just don’t care about at all. “Voting with your dollar” against oppression doesn’t actually work and listening to people pretend that withholding money from an already heavily subsidized capitalist system will have an effect is just depressing to me. Also, as a great interview in The Nation this week discussed, an intense focus on “gay marriage” is actually damaging to larger efforts for true LGBTQ* justice. Basically what I’m saying is: glamarchy.
Finally – and I’m sure Molly knows actual tons more about this than I do – somebody’s running on a “black genocide” anti-choice platform in Kansas. RHRealityCheck picked up the story this week and I spent a good ten minutes wincing intermittently after I read it. Really, people?
I need to experience some simple pleasures after all that so here’s a scuzzy music video about skateboarding and hanging out with dogs.
*bonus points to the linked article for calling out Amanda Marcotte, who’s been on my shit list for awhile but whose intellectual laziness as of late is basically just insulting
Pearl has been trying hard to be a social human but tbh pooping parties is more fun
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