CORSET is the go-to magazine for all things sexuality. We embrace human curiosity. We honor sensuality. We celebrate sex. And we want you to join our movement.

So with that, I packed up my proverbial bags and headed on over to sign my professional life away. I have been working with a photographer for the past several month on creating what I hope to become a lesson in observation of erotic nudes of Black women.

We shot some images, I wrote an article and actually used spell check and read that bitch for errors twice and BAM!!

[imagebrowser id=4]I have been looking at porn since the age of nine and fighting the stupid ass conservative opinions of the Blacks I was unfortunate enough to have been raised around since I could form words (true story!).

We’ve never been on the same page, as I, a sexually enthusiastic and curious sort wouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of something that bought me and other people so much pleasure. They were talking, but I wasn’t paying that shit NO attention no matter how bad they felt at the fact that I wouldn’t feel bad about myself.

Physical interactions are like gifts to me, just think of me as a woman that naturally liked to give ‘feel goods’ to whomever I choose.

Overall, the response to my work has been very positive. I’m receiving emails and Facebook messages from my conservative Christian friends who wish they had the balls to do it. Much of the feed back has been that its about time for black women to enjoy self motivated boldness.

Trills Smith, my photographer always delivers images that are both tasteful and intriguing. I can explain any variation of sexual irony in society or sub-culture details and he gets it whether he’s personally invested in my topic or not.

What’s even more interesting is that we’ve got a decade of age span between us and we’re both growing as students of life through our work as photographer and subject.

His insight, comments, and questions are teaching me about myself, subjectively. And I’m sure he’s leaning a thing or two from the crazy shit that I’ve been throwing at him these last few months. We deliver sex and sensuality but if you only knew what goes on behind the scenes.

But they do say laughter is sexy….so…

Of course it would take a wandering Facebook voyeur who doesn’t know me very well to have the nerve to inquire about the well being of my daughter or any ‘children’ of mine (Ha!) who may see this in the future.

I’m concerned about their concern over my display of sensual thumb sucking and how it may affect the morality and future good social graces of my decedents.

So, how does my daughter feel about her mother’s blatant sexual display……?

She’s proud of me because I am ‘a kick ass sex positive Mom’ and my picture is ‘cool’.

She did blush momentarily. I did too, how audacious, right!?

Obtaining the cover of an international magazine is indeed, cool, but having a daughter who understands why I do what I do is even cooler. Having an adult daughter who is sexually freer and more knowledgeable than I was allowed to be is absolutely priceless.

Grab your copy of the upcoming Corset Magazine: The Oral Issue before it goes on sale July 1 and get a second past or future issue for FREE. Find out what I have to say about Oral sex, bask in the glory of several full color visual photo spreads and thigh clenching articles that will make you re-think the meaning of having a filthy mouth.

The post Kids and Sex: How My Daughter Feels About My Sex Work appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Now, clearly to any rationally thinking mind, it is absurd to suggest anything as ridiculous as the aforementioned. But, don’t tell that to South Carolina State Senator Kevin Bryant, who argues that it is the unborn fetus conceived in an act of rape or incestuous relationship who is the real “victim,” and not its would-be-mother, Yes, I know, this is just re-damn-diculous.

This via The Columbia State:

The dispute focuses on the definition of “victim.” Supporters, like Bryant, say the unborn child is a victim who has rights that must be protected.

“We’re focusing on the rights and the liberty of an unborn child, and I can’t understand why the life of a child that’s a victim ought to be terminated,” Bryant said.

So what is an uninsured rape victim supposed to do? Well, she can pay-out-of-pocket for an abortion — something that isn’t likely given her financial status. Or, she can bare the shame and degradation of knowingly carrying and eventually going into labor and delivering the child of her attacker.

At that point, she can then make the decision to keep the child, or give it up for adoption. Now I’m not a woman, but this seems very wrong on so many levels. I could be wrong, but it seems too much like punishing a woman for 1) being a victim of rape, and 2) for being poor. According to the provisio — which is defined as a temporary one-year law — abortions would be paid for with tax payer dollars only in the event that the life of the mother is in danger.

The three exemptions in the state health plan — rape, incest or life of the mother — mirrors the policy of the federal government health plan, commonly referred to as the Hyde Amendment, named for former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois. That federal policy has been in place for more than 30 years.

Since 2006, state taxpayers have paid for 6 abortions. All of them were to save the life of the mother, according to the state Budget and Control Board.

Currently the state’s health insurance plan covers 417,000 individuals – no word on just how many of them are raped annually. However, this is something SC Republicans have been trying to pass for the last two years. Here’s to hoping that they remain unsuccessful this time around. But whether they are or not, it can never be said that women without access to affordable health care were not under attack like they always have by our slightly-more-conservative friends in the Republican party.

[FULL STORY HERE]

The post South Carolina Pushes Abortion Ban for Low-Income Victims of Rape & Incest appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

I wonder if people realize the breakdown of the services that Planned Parenthood actually provide. It seems to me that Planned Parenthood gets such a poor rap from ev’rybody-n-they-mama for abortions and what not but the majority of their services are preventative measures to ensure that women’s (and men’s too!) reproductive health needs are assessed appropriately. Planned Parenthood released a statement addressing their disappointment with the Komen Foundation succumbing to the pressure of the far Right, and the statement also included information about the very positive benefits of the former partnership:

Over the past five years, Planned Parenthood health centers with Komen program funding have provided nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams out of the more than four million clinical breast exams performed nationwide at Planned Parenthood health centers, as well as more than 6,400 mammogram referrals out of 70,000 mammogram referrals. Anti-choice groups in America have repeatedly threatened the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide these lifesaving cancer screenings.

Planned Parenthood’s quality, accessibility and affordability make it a leader in identifying breast cancer early when there is the best chance of successful treatment. Nationwide, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide nearly 750,000 breast cancer screenings annually, offering risk assessments, breast exams, breast health information and education, and diagnostic and surgical referrals.

Of course the Komen Foundation may get some money or support from some people or groups of people who do not support women’s rights. Breast cancer and women’s rights aren’t necessarily grouped in one, you know; in fact, as stated above, my opinion of Komen and their TaTas et aliae is that the organization has benefited in latent objectification of women cancer patients – even if for a good cause. People often think that because a person or group does good for one group of people, who may be disenfranchised in some way, the person or group cannot participate in acts that are detrimental to the group.

The outrage with the Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood (who has taken a financial beating from all over the place, beginning with Congress) boils down to inequities in preventative healthcare. Planned Parenthood provides a number of resources to people who are uninsured or under-insured, and with their funds being eliminated daily, many women living in poverty are not able to receive services that are necessary. In 2008, 17% of the organizations resources were devoted to cancer screening and prevention. That may not seem like a large number percentage wise, but if you look at the numbers, you may be able to realize how substantial an effect defunding Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide cancer pre-screenings will affect individual women.

For the record, women are “poorer” than men in all ethnicities; however, Black women, followed Latinas are more likely to be in poverty in the United States. Black women are most likely of all women to die of breast cancer, even though they have a slightly lower incidence rate of breast cancer. Breast cancer is the second most common cause of death among Black women. Even the Circle of Promise website, who is a project of the Komen Foundation specifically geared toward Black women, cites that the higher mortality rate in Black women may be the result of, “differences in access to and utilization of early detection and treatment.” I don’t know the ethnicities or socioeconomic background of the women (and men!) who access Planned Parenthood’s resources; I am going with the assumption that since they do not require that you have insurance, the majority of their patients do not have insurance and, as such, do not have the means for private healthcare. Caving to the pressures of the anti-choice movement wages a war on women’s bodies, poor women, and women of color.

That aside, I think that the Komen Foundation’s dissolution to its long term partnership with Planned Parenthood is foolish on a fundamental level because cancer research and contraceptive healthcare go hand in hand. Even Rick Perry acknowledges the validity in HPV vaccinations where most of the Right dismisses any weight in claims that science may make. (Yes, I know he did it wrong with proposing that the vaccinations be mandatory, but that is not the issue at hand.) The Anti-Choice movement has shoved a wedge between two causes for women (and women’s bodies) and the war is now between us, but we are the only ones suffering.

The Komen Foundation is pissing all over Susan G. Komen’s name and her sister, the CEO, should be ashamed. The organization released a statement this morning backpeddling and saying that the pressures to withdraw its support of Planned Parenthood was not political, as it isn’t a political organization and I call shenanigans. If you care about women, women’s bodies, TaTas or whatever the hell you want to reduce us to, care about all of our rights.

The post Susan G. Komen Foundation: Still Racing for the Cure, Just Not for All Women appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

I can’t imagine myself saying aloud that people of color are not deserving of citizenship and are “illegal”. I would never bring myself to say that inner city kids could dumpster-dive for food during school breaks instead of the government increasing Food Stamps and other benefit programs (so that they can eat!). I cannot imagine myself saying people with same sex/same gender loving attractions are worst than terrorists. So I honestly, genuinely, sincerely wonder what flows through Rick Santorum’s mind when he says things like, ‘well, rape sucks but if God blesses you with a kid, you gotta deal with it because abortion is bad.’ I mean, did anybody seem him on Piers Morgan?

Now, admittedly, I may have caused a bit more of a ruckus than Piers Morgan and argued that point, but whatever. Conception, conshmeption. Maybe I’d have said, ‘Okay, Mr. Santorum, Should rape victims be thankful for the risk of sexually transmitted infections resulting from forced intercourse which, I assume, was unprotected since a child was conceived?’ I expect that he would know not how to respond. Or maybe he would. I can’t imagine where his mind would go from there. I might find myself questioning a bit harder.

Come On, What Am I Supposed To Say?

‘Mr. Santorum, did you know that victims of sexual assaultare 3 times more likely to suffer from depression, 6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol, 26 times more likely to abuse drugs, and 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide?’

I would like a genuine response to his lack of concern about the welfare of victims, but I anticipate, especially given his devote Catholicism, that he’d discuss how killing herself after the rape is also the victim’s fault. I’d probably get angry, but I’d likely want to continue to engage. So I’d say, ‘Mr. Santorum, you realize that post-traumatic stress disorder comes POST trauma, correct? And that because someone else assumed power to violate a victim’s body, they’ve been traumatized to the point that they no longer want to live? That 13% of all rape victims make serious suicide attempts?‘

And when he gets too frustrated or speechless to address me, or simply satisfied with himself that he can call me another angry Black woman, I’m certain that he’ll want to leave the conversation. So, as a final attempt to appeal to his logic, and while I know the argument is equally about abortion as it is about rape/sexual assault and less about race, I’d probably say quietly to him as a checkmate to satisfy myself, ‘OK, sir. How would you feel if your either woman in your life became pregnant as a result of a rape by a Black man?’

I think I could get through to him.

I know that this is not proper thinking. I am not promoting an idea about Black masculinity. What I am saying is that we know how fondly Mr. Santorum is of Black people; we also know that not-a-one of these racist Republicans want their daughters speaking to Black men, let alone willingly engaging in sexual intercourse with any. You think if someone he loved was raped by a Black man he wouldn’t rush them to an abortion provider and pay for it himself? You out your mind.

The post Rick Santorum, Abortion, & the “What If” Rape Question appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Sometimes I want to just speak the way I do naturally about the things I feel about passionately!

And I really feel some way about myself and all things related to my vagina. I love my coochie, it does amazing things for me and others. My vagina and others contributes to your life in ways that you have not often considered.

I often wonder why other people aren’t more concerned with her safety and health, at least concerned enough to want what’s right for her and other vagina?

Sometimes there are no need for fancy ass words and comparisons when I see outlandish shit like this recent article on Aljazeera about the statistics surrounding Cervical Cancer and why the women in certain US states are more likely to die if they are unfortunate enough to develop this disease.

But every year 4,000 American women die from the disease, most of them in the South. For instance, a woman in Mississippi is nearly twice as likely to die from cervical cancer as an average American woman.

The issue is not that states like Mississippi are poorer and therefore have less capital available to provide for such services as cancer screenings.

No, that would be the easy answer. That’s the answer a simple person would come up with, A+B=C, however, things are not as simple as some people need them to be in order to understand the bigger picture.

The seemingly obvious answer is that Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, and therefore must have a lot of residents without health insurance. But when Mississippi is compared to a state like California, which has a similar rate of uninsured people, Mississippi’s death rate from cervical cancer remains extraordinary: 75 per cent higher than that in California.

The issue is not with the population and some dysfunctional underestimation of the severity of cervical cancer, rather the debate is about ideology and some babbling bullshit that has nothing to do with the realities of disease and medicine.

Cervical cancer is a hotly-debated political topic in the United States right now – a debate fuelled largely by Republican presidential contenders. The cancer is caused by strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is sexually transmitted. As a result, discourse on cervical cancer centres around whether or not newly available vaccines to prevent the disease encourage promiscuity.

So why does Mississippi have a 75% higher death rate for cervical cancer then a place just as big and just as wide?

I’m sure the people in Mississippi would love to know. Well the answer is quite simple…

Mississippi politicians believe that unborn and not yet conceived babies have a right to life so in order to protect these babies (that have not yet been conceived or born) the state refuses to provide funding to Planned Parenthood through the Title X program because Planned Parenthood supports a women’s right to terminate a pregnancy, among other service they provide to the uninsured community.

Title X DOES NOT provide funds to Planned Parenthood FOR termination of pregnancy but Pro-Life Advi-holes still somehow confuse you into thinking that Planned Parenthood=Abortion. And it doesn’t, but even if it did. So the fuck what?

Title X is a Federal Program that grants money to states which in turn disperse the money to counties in order for them to provide medical services to those that do not have health insurance.

Some states allow Planned Parenthood to provide the majority of health services to the uninsured and funds them sufficiently which enables the facility to charge reasonable fees for treatment costs such as cancer screening.

Planned Parenthood is also clean, efficient, compassionate and easily accessible to the low income and excluded demographic (read: inner city/poor and/or immigrant population). I don’t even need to get into the validity of having respectable, responsible, and clean facilities; many a state agency could take a que from the quality of service of Planned Parenthood.

What makes Mississippi fail is their decision to keep their Title X money within the state offices and burn it up within the Department of Health and Human Services. California grants their money to the private non-profit Planned Parenthood.

Because of this difference in the allocation of funds California cancer patients have a chance at survival; Mississippi cancer patients not so much.

In Mississippi, a woman you love may be allowed to die because her health care is treated like an administrative nuance.

When you live in a state that runs public clinics that are not accessible and where the staff are ignorant of their own practice policies you will catch cancer or any other reproductive disease and you will more than likely die.

You will die because the decision on whether or not you can or cannot have the medicine that will save your life (before or after your life is in jeopardy) is being made by people that disrespect the vagina for stupid reasons that you silently consent to.

You or a woman you love may die of cervical cancer whether she fucked or not.

The argument is that the vaccine may save your life or the life of a woman you love but may also somehow allow you or her to feel free/able/brave/confident (what’s the word I’m looking for?) enough to one day go out and have sex. The vaccine may cause fucking….you can’t have it because you might have sex. I wonder how that works if you are married? Or not religious?

I wonder why more people aren’t concerned by these phantom moral police that jeopardize the survival of the vagina. Religious fear of the potential future fuck of some random woman is not a good enough reason ONE SINGLE WOMAN TO DIE.

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood’s primary focus is women’s health care. In fact, it is the US’ largest provider of women’s healthcare. It provides birth control, emergency contraception, pregnancy testing, sexually-transmitted infection treatment, breast exams and cervical cancer screening. One in five American women use Planned Parenthood at some point during their lifetime.

Planned Parenthood is the sole provider of care and services to nearly 17 million uninsured women in the United States. 

In February 2011, the US House of Representatives successfully passed a bill introduced by Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) to completely eliminate Title X – and offered nothing in its place. Early next year, when the president releases his proposed budget for 2013, the same is expected to happen again – except that this time, in this campaign season of cost-cutting one-upmanship, the Senate might go along and really end the programme.

People have allowed the ideology of the Right to Life advocates to strangle Planned Parenthood’s existence into near extinction and with that the lives of many women will be lost. I hope not to be one of them.

Why this isn’t an issue for you I do not know. Maybe you don’t like pussy or you hate your Mother for shitting you out. I don’t know.

But if so, FUCK YOU then!

I don’t need an audience to scream and I don’t need back up to know when I’m right and shit is wrong. And that shit is wrong.

I’m not the only woman out here with a vagina.

My daughter has one.

Your Mamma has one.

And I’ll bet my last Newport cigarette on the fact that your Grandmother had one too.

So why don’t you find it counter productive that ideology pretends to be Pro-Life for imaginary unborn babies yet they are willing to jeopardize the women that give babies the lives in which they hold so precious?

Riddle me that, Batman?

The post You’re Pro-Life But Not When It Comes to Women?! appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

I was presented with the picture below and asked to take a stab at making some type of social commentary from it. A group of young black girls with their pregnant bellies distended, smart phones in hand, in a bathroom somewhere rocking khaki’s and button downs.

Are these girls part of a Pregnancy Pact, which I hear is some nonsense when chicks in high school (it is still high school, isn’t it?) allegedly make a promise to their besties that they will all intentionally get pregnant. Back when I was in school that was called ‘just a matter of time’ but we I guess we evolve.

These girls could be students of a public school somewhere who all happen to have been occupying the bathroom at the same time and decided to snap a ‘Awe…look at us’ precious moment photo.

The answer is that I don’t know.

Don’t care.

And I don’t know because I didn’t look close enough to discover details nor did I blow up the picture or try to play detective to determine who these girls are and what circumstances may have caused them to now appear here, in digital form, on my dusty laptop.

The answer is that I don’t care about their circumstances. By that I don’t mean that I don’t care about these young Black girls, because I do.

My lack of concern has to do with the details that led them to be here with their individual stomach’s swollen with new life.

I don’t need to know the details of their circumstances when I know young women are more celebrated for the functions their vagina than for the women that they will become/are.

These girls are here smiling in this picture because they have been taught that what goes in and/or what comes out of their pussy is of much more importance than they are.

The evidence is everywhere; in media, in society, in religion, and in lack of education…they all say ‘fuck, ladies…….and have us some babies’.

Of course, there is a preferred order of events but the outcome is pretty much the same.

We do not encouraging young women to be responsible with their bodies and their ability to give birth.

We tell young women that children are a ‘blessing’ without letting THEM know that THEY are not BLESSINGS and their parents work tooth and nail to support them..and will have to work equally hard to support another mouth. Or maybe they’re just the fertile children of dead beat parents who welcome the swollen stomach as another much needed state check.

Or maybe the smiling girls in this picture may have been raised by the type of parents who think it productive to make more trips to church to admonish God to provide for this ‘blessing’ no one can afford. Money is placed in the collection plate in hopes of purchasing a successful life plan via God’s good graces.

Children are not a blessing.

Children having children are even less of a blessing.

Maybe, sometimes but…maybe not.

We throw these babies baby showers.

We celebrate tween’s becoming mothers by showering them with gifts of miniature corporate brands so that they may grow up to be properly indoctrinated into a world of self destructive materialism.

We encourage the father’s to get in real close to the baby faced mother we snap the ‘family photo’ for Facebook.

We perpetuate symbolic traditions saved especially for the celebration of additional life when it was introduced to families of means; or families in need of an extra pair of productive hands back when we ate what we killed and live on the fat o’the land.

We still practice celebration without taking into consideration that the ‘gift of life’ is an expensive one to maintain these days.

There is not much assistance, nothing is guaranteed, and a young woman’s partner may be unwilling or unable to participate in responsibility.

We have sex education that only goes has far as discussing the basic biology of humans but not the outcome of using those same body parts.

Do kids even know what Fallopian tubes are? Do they have no idea that when a woman becomes pregnant she becomes a matter of legal debate and political discourse instead of a person? Shouldn’t someone tell them that?

We insist that denial, shaming by magical ghosts and hope are forms of birth control in the face of a society of young people that are actively engaging in sex.

Contrary to the picture above, it is my personal opinion, that young people are more open and responsible then this photo implies.

Many young people are more responsible then we give them credit in light of our refusal to accept sex as a basic social health issue.

We’re ashamed and hiding but luckily there is Google, books, condoms and personal responsibility; some teenagers do take advantage.

We shame some young women into ignorance and silence about their sexuality and value.

We turn our heads as some young women are courted by grown men in inappropriate relationships.

Some young people are allowed to have over night guests.

Some young people are left with boredom and hormones while parents work around the clock for the man to scratch out a survival.

These girls are in the pictures smiling because we encourage our young people to be in ‘committed’ relationships; we discourage them from dating or have options and choices.

We push our young people (along with the rest of Western civilization)  into the servitude that is parenting by promoting reproduction as some form of a contribution to society at large when in reality it’s not.

At all. Society could give a fuck about a black teenage mother; the baby does not make them special. Someone should tell these girls that.

These girls are here smiling in this picture because sometimes there is no future to lose when there was no future to begin with. So you instead revel in the lack of direction and focus, you look forward to a big change, you take pictures in the mirror with peace sign fingers because being pregnant is cool.

The celebrated self sacrificial perception of motherhood satisfies a need to be needed in some Black females place in society.

These girls are smiling in this picture because they accomplished the pleasure of having their bodies consumed by public demand.

These girl are here pregnant because we don’t discuss that sometimes abortion, which is phrased as the killing of an unborn child, is an option for a woman when she and her partner decide that a child is not conducive to her/their life plans without fear of condemnation when she chooses herself.

If a baby isn’t convenient or conducive, affordable or doable, possible or wanted. Why is it here?

These girls are here smiling because we don’t allow some girls to have life plans or to realize there is a such a thing as a life plan.

There is such a thing as decisive, logical, assessed days of options and choices and prices and regrets to be had by all.

Does it really matter if this was a Pregnancy Pact or a group of young, anonymous random black girls?

Does it matter if they are students at an alternative school working on furthering their education in spite of being pregnant (you go girl!)?

These girls are here smiling because short sighted moralistic cocoons protect young women from realizing that the crowd leaves after the newborn baby pictures OR the abortion procedure.

They are here smiling now before they will be left alone to deal with the consequences of their actions; but there will be no group picture of that.

I promise you.

The post Should We Be Ashamed About Proud Pregnant Black Teens? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Close to what, you ask? Close to our melt down. 

California is a unique wok of cultures and races, and if nobody else knows how to throw a “destruction of civilization as we know it” movement, it’s California.

The racial resentment that California residents are exposed to is a special kind of xenophobia involving class-ism, sexism, racism, patriotism, racial pride, cultural identity, and an educational system that is a failed integration experiment.

Fresh immigrants turn up each day to happily take part in an intolerant society expressed as wry disregard spread among all of the different ‘people’ that live there for all of the ‘other’ people that live there.

But not this time.

This time it seems that most people are well aware of what side of the fence they are on.

This time there is a line drawn in the sand, and THIS TIME, it was not drawn with a black and blue marker.

Until Oakland Police Department turned  a peaceful process into a war zone. Scott Olson may or may not recover from having a can of tear gas explode in his face.

The ORIGINAL line in the sand was drawn straight and narrow with a vibrant, evanescent shade of green. The country’s current economic famine is much louder than the normal choir of race baiting politics we all listen to. There is no confusion about what the ORIGINAL #Occupation is all about.

So why is it that Oakland Police Department and Mayor Jean Quan treating the people of Oakland as if they won’t turn a muth fuka out!? Is it any wonder that she found herself a bullhorn and yanked the chain on the police, before someone REALLY gets hurt #RodneyKing

Does Oakland Need to Smack A Bitch?

How convenient that we are all home, unemployed and miserable while we get to watch our country silence our cry of despair.

Police repression is being recorded, reported and broadcast everywhere.

EVERYWHERE, at every moment and yet they still move forward against us. Countries whom we bomb and tsk at the ‘barbaric’ behavior their government are realizing, as are we, that aren’t all as different than we thought. 

The lack of fear or concern shown by the Oakland law enforcement is troubling to say the least. How far is our police force willing to go in order to promote ‘order’ among the very people they are to be in service to protect?

Who is in charge of the men with guns?

The latest action was the most brutal. Hundreds of police officers from 12 agencies, decked out in riot gear, surrounded an encampment in Oakland, California early Tuesday morning. Under the direction of Democratic Party Mayor Jean Quan, the police used tear gas, bean bag guns and a sonic cannon to attack and arrest about one hundred peaceful demonstrators and lay waste to the occupation site.

We have a bird’s eye view of political oppression and it is apparent that our government would like for us all to remain fooled by the guise of our country as a self determined Democracy.

As dogs are unleashed on peaceful protesters do those who criticize the validity of the #OccupyWallStreet movement also co-sign with the hostility shown when citizens exercise their rights to have rights!?

California gets a little different when they are unhappy….and you thought the UK burned……..hold on, kids. I hear a storm’s a-coming.

The post Turn This Mutha Out: Everything According to Plan With Occupy Oakland appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

` is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death – they charged her with the “depraved-heart murder” of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

“Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws,” said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). “It’s turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights.”

First off, this case needs, and should be given more attention. Sure she didn’t fail to report a missing child for thirty one days to authorities. This is a woman facing life in prison for the murder of her unborn child, when she was 15-years0old. I don’t know about you, but there are several egregious issues with that scenario. First one being: she was a teenager with a drug problem at the time. But I guess that’s no big deal since there’s an epidemic of Black teens pregnant and hooked on drugs as some Conservatives would have you believe.

Please believe that without the necessary media attention, this young Black woman is doomed. Without the media spotlight, with her being Black, and this being a case that sets much precedence – not to mention the political implications given the GOP’s war on women of late — this case is much bigger than the Casey Anthony murder trial. But like I said before, she’s Black so who cares? She just did what every Black woman did in the 80s. That is, give birth to crack babies who have now all grown up to be the scourge of our society, right?

I know what you’re thinking, “Nah, this isn’t about the rights of women RiPPa. This is about protecting and seeking justice for unborn children. After all, they have rights too, right?” Sure they have rights; I mean I’m all about fetuses being protected from being kicked in the stomach, or risk death at the hands of a third party. But to criminalize a woman for drug use while pregnant when there’s no evidence to support it as being the cause of death of her unborn child? Hello! That’s bullshit! What, are we going to do the same for women who drink and smoke cigarettes while pregnant? Aren’t those “legal abuses” found to be more harmful to unborn children? I mean, that’s what the experts say, right?

Recently many of us in the Black community were outraged by the tactics of anti-abortion groups as they targeted the Black community with their billboards. We voiced our displeasure, and won. We should be equally disgusted and vocal about the indictment of Ms. Gibbs. We should let our voices be heard, and heard loudly. We all raised our voices and expressed our disgust when it came to the Scott Sisters and the state of Mississippi, and we were victorious. Today, we must do the same for Rennie Gibbs. We marched on Jena fighting for justice for six Black teenage boys. It would be a damn shame if we do not seek justice for one Black woman. Wouldn’t be surprising; but disappointing.

Thankfully others are already on it:

[...] Women’s rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs’ case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi’s highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

“If it’s not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is,” Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. “I hope it’s not a trend that’s going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme.”

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state’s bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat “as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering”.

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a “depraved heart” or to “harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance”, says the brief.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: “Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute.”

Some of you are still angry about Casey Anthony getting away with murder as you se it. Well, you should be just as angry or even more, if this young Black woman goes to prison for the rest of her life, for the crime of being a troubled teen. Surely in good conscience you can’t say that she deserves to be in prison.

(FULL STORY HERE)

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