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Pregnancy and Parenting Education Reform

    I have invented two sister organizations, Pregnancy Education Reform and Parenting Education Reform aimed at informing expecting mothers and parents about crucial issues affecting individuals in the United States in order to promote inclusion and understanding and to create stronger communities. For my second web event I produced two potential publications from the initial organization, Pregnancy Education Reform. The first was a collection of pdf images of the pages of a pamphlet entitled, “Intersex: An Introductory Guide for Moms-to-be”. And the second was an open letter to primary care providers explaining how to most effectively use the pamphlet and general advice for making prenatal and postnatal care more sensitive to intersex children and their families. For this web event I have recreated the pamphlet and open letter to primary care providers for a second topic, cerebral palsy.  

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Material For Tonight

diffraction
intra-action
super crip
entanglements
cripping
evolution
intersex
sexual diversity
continuum
abnormal vs. normal
natural
2 to 1 pregnancy
sex selection
sex ratios
right relationships
ethics of care
allies
cultural relativism
precarity
the people’s microphone
trigger warning
a grievable life
Wilchins
Clare
Barad
Roughgarden
McDermott
Humbach
Butler
Farmer
Cleave

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What Makes a Family

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Sex Workers’ Rights: A Call for Decriminalization

*Sex workers can be male, female, intersex, trans*, genderqueer, or otherwise, and exist in every corner of the world, but for the sake of this web event I have focused on female sex workers in the United States.

title

            This web event proposes potential goals for sex workers’ activism and outlines many of the challenges to achieving these goals. Due to the polarizing nature of the subject, a sex workers’ rights campaign would need to address both social and political components. A solely political project, without address confronting seminal issues of stigmatization and discrimination, would struggle in garnering support and would unlikely improve the actual lives of sex workers. Exclusively cultural change would fail to protect sex workers under law and would give implicit consent to the current legal system that regards sex workers as second-rate citizens.

no bad women

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Tearjerkers

the biggest loserextreme makeover home editionsportscenter my wish

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Productive Activism

I was very pleasantly surprised by Judith Butler’s lecture last night. Going into it I was very apprehensive, I knew that the lectures were supposed to reflect her more recent dedication to activism, a change I appreciate, but I was nervous that her style of writing (and by extension her style of speech) would alienate a large potential audience and limit the reach of her ideas. In general, I do not believe in a necessary separation between scholarly work and political ideology. I am in favor of scholars who ground their work in activism and/or the pragmatic rather than the simply theoretical. I was very encouraged that Butler was able to do this while maintaining a rigorous and sophisticated academic platform--while still being fairly comprehensible and accessible. The academic content of her lecture did not obscure her point but rather was critically important  as the thread that ties her diverse interests together. This emphasis separated it from other activist or political agendas that I have most often been exposed to.

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Publications from Pregnancy Education Reform

I have invented an organization, Pregnancy Education Reform, and have included two potential publications from the organization. The first is a collection of pdf images of the pages of a pamphlet entitled, “Intersex: An Introductory Guide for Moms-to-be”. And the second is an open letter to primary care providers explaining how to most effectively use the pamphlet and general advice for making prenatal and postnatal care more sensitive to intersex children and their families. Although the organization intends to empower women and their choices, it does take a position against non-medically necessary genitalia normalizing surgeries in its literature.

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Reactions to "The He Hormone" ...

& musings on "science" writing.

Mia Hamm vs. Michael Jordan "anything you can do I can do better" Gatorade commercial
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The Perils of Passing as Explored by the Works of Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez

    In order to explore the intra-action of queerness and Puerto Rican-ness I have chosen to focus on two pivotal queer cultural productions by Puerto Ricans. The first is the 1995 film by Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican. The second is a poetic excerpt from Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez’ play Side Effects. These texts address many critical questions that intersect both querness and Puerto Rican-ness. Among these, the theme of passing, essential to both texts, particularly necessitates the interaction of queerness and Puerto Rican-ness. Passing is so critical to immigration and queer studies that the editors of the anthology on sexuality and immigration in which critical analyses of both of these texts appear, chose the title Passing Lines. In the introduction they argue that passing “can implicitly question not only the solidity of ethno-racial lines but of sexual lines as well” (Epps 5). I believe the Negrón-Muntaner film and the Sandoval-Sánchez play, as well as their authors' mediations on their respective works, illustrate through passing just how inter- and intra-connected queerness is with Puerto Rican-ness.

Images of "brincando el charco"

Brincando el charco

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Cochlear Implants

Here is a link to an article explaining the circumstances of the youtube video entitled "Jonathan's Cochlear Implant Activation 8 mo., Rt Ear cont'd"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1283703/Moment-deaf-baby-Jonathan-hears-mothers-voice-time.html

I find this really interesting in terms of disability studies, I know it can be a dangerous game to look at the comments on youtube videos/websites, but even just a quick glance at the top few were pretty generative in terms of discussion:

"How ironic that 8months ago this boy could have been aborted if it were known he was deaf, apparently considered a serious disability. And here we have him receiving treatment from doctors as if they are life savers. When they could have been killing him behind closed doors not so long ago & we would never have known about it. He is an human being first & foremost, has been since fertilisation. These people are not gods, they have not 'given him back his life' just given him a new sense. A lot of deaf people feel very angry & alienated because of peoples ignorant views about deafness."

"99 people are blind.

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