#first she says sexuality is a choice then she says HIV is caused because of gay sex

[hissterical-nyaan]

I'm actually gonna start crying this professor is so upsetting

[differentnutpeace]

Once On The Brink Of Eradication, Syphilis is Raging Again

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as catching the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can't even remember how many times he's had it.  หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

"Three or four? Five times in my life?" he struggles to recall. "It does not seem like a big deal."

At the time, about a decade ago, Lemon went on frequent methamphetamine binges, kicking his libido into overdrive and silencing the voice in his head that said condoms would be a wise choice at a raging sex party.

"It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision making abilities are skewed," says Lemon.

He's sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon says syphilis comes with the territory.

"In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis," he says.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low, public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001, grew steadily for the next two decades, then spiked 74% since 2015. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In California and the US, about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the western United States who have syphilis also use meth, a drug that has seen its own surge in recent years.

These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: these congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the US, and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to COVID, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

"We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time," says Dr. Erica Pan, California's state epidemiologist. "Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic."

Billy Lemon is executive director of the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, where gay men can get help with addiction. Lemon says that when it comes to methamphetamine use in particular, syphilis often comes with the territory.

Beth LaBerge/KQED

A number of factors are fueling the syphilis surge

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In the gay community in San Francisco, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date "faster than getting pizza delivered to your home," says Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men's health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don't always know the names of the men they hook up with.

"They sometimes only know their online handle," says Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at UCSF School of Medicine and author of the book Strange Bedfellows, about the history of STDs. "And if the sex didn't go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don't even know how to reach that person again."

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, which was around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PreP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV negative, but considered at-risk for exposure to the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, says Park.

"If one man is taking PreP and the other one is virally suppressed, there's no HIV risk at all," she says. "So why use condoms if you don't mind having a touch of syphilis?"

Diagnosing syphilis is tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness, or brain damage – it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, says Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, "lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis," craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She says doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren't trained on where to look, or when.

"The patient came in saying, 'I'm tired,'" Park says, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. "How many people are going to say, 'Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum, I want to look? We only do that at the STD clinic because that's what we do."

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the coronavirus pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law intended to expand access to health care actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

"Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren't going to be necessary," said Dr. Karen Smith in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She says once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

"We sort of all assumed that if you've got health insurance and you've got access to a doctor, that's all that you need," she said. "It turns out that that's not really all that you need."

People still had affairs that they didn't want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn't want to probe into their patients' sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents' purview.

"That loss of anonymous care really was a problem," Smith said.

The spread of syphilis is reaching newborns, too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she'd become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looks like a blueberry muffin. At first she thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It's important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through their childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits, and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 of these congenital syphilis cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

"The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable," she says. "This is something that's completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy."

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, increasing 279% over the previous five years, and hitting a high of cases in the U.S. That is more mother-to-child transmissions of syphilis than there were at the peak of mother-to-child cases of HIV in 1991.

"How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we've been using since the forties still works," says Dr. Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. "And yet we have this completely out of control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society."

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs – mainly methamphetamine – and they are often homeless, said Dr. Karen Smith, former director of CDPH. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food, or drugs, prompting Smith to call congenital syphilis a "disease of despair." Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize that they're pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

"They're very concerned about what's going to happen when they're found to be pregnant and using drugs," said Dr. Smith. "They're concerned that their drug use will be reported and then CPS will be involved and their children will be taken away."

Romni Neiman is a veteran contact tracer with the CDC. Before she got redirected to COVID last year, she was working on STD prevention in California, including the problem of congenital syphilis. Neiman says when she tries to reach pregnant women who may have been exposed to syphilis, it's extremely challenging.

Neiman remembers looking for one woman in the late 80s in Chicago. She used drugs, was pregnant and had been exposed to syphilis. The woman's housing was so unstable, that Neiman went to three different places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

"She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid," Neiman remembers. "Sometimes it's really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you're like, 'Wow. Wow.'"

Those challenges, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, is what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis cases in Fresno County in the 2010s, says Park. Local contact tracers couldn't keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements. After leveling off for a couple years, congenital syphilis rates in Fresno spiked 900% in 2018.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, says state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy, instead of just once. And, rather than waiting for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach, and screening pregnant women in the emergency room, and in prisons and jails.

Dr. Pan believes the coronavirus pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a more nimble response to emerging and re-emerging public health issues, like syphilis and congenital syphilis.

"It's been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure," she said. "I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well."

[christinaroseandrews]

Certified "Sex Doctor," Kira Murphy has always been a free spirit. She's passionate about preventing STIs, making sure kids get all of their vaccines, and celibri-stalking her favorite politician - Barclay Lucas. Sure, he might be a Tory (for U.S. Peeps that's the equivalent of the Republican Party), but despite his party trying to dismantle social protections he's one of the good ones. He's out to save the world and look good in a Savile Row suit. But celebrity crushes aside, Kira's out to make sure her patients receive the best care possible. So when a depressed, young man with HIV enters her examination room she's going to do what she can however she can to make sure he's given the help he so clearly needs.

Barclay Lucas has always been the responsible one. The reliable one. Mr. Fix-it. But when his brother, Henry, is diagnosed with HIV and falls into a depressive spiral, Barclay doesn't know what to do. However he doesn't need to, the eccentric and quirky doctor at the NHS hospital has managed to get through to him. But she's not his actual doctor. So Barclay needs to change that.

And with that, staid and conservative Barclay meets weird and wonderful Kira and their lives will never be the same.

I'm torn about this book. I've loved Susie Tate's writing in the past and Kira's been a long time favorite of mine since I first read about her in Beg, Borrow, and Steal. So I was super excited to read this book. I like politics stuff.(Anyone who knows me in Real life can tell you that). Plus, Anything but Easy has two of my favorite tropes -- Fake Dating and Enemies-to-Lovers -- it's like this book was tailor made for me. 

So why am I so torn?

Let’s start with the some of the good.

Kira is still her quirky fun self. She's unpredictable and has a very idiosyncratic way of speaking. I loved seeing her interact with her patients. She's like the definition of Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. She's tiny. Quirky. Out to save the world. And she possesses very little in the way of common sense or self preservation. But, just like the character herself says (which nice lampshade hang) she's a bit of an acquired taste. She reminds me in a lot of ways of Fandom!Darcy. You know the one who is able to draw Bruce out of his shell, keep up a prank war with Clint and/or Loki, and ride herd on all of the scientists while winning the heart of whatever avenger the author wants to pair her with. You know, that Darcy.  I like that Darcy.

But like Fandom!Darcy, Kira does some things that people in real life would find questionable or in really bad taste.

So I liked Kira. She’s a nicknamer. An idiosyncratic talker. She’s a bit like me, but with less fashion sense. 

So on to something I didn’t like.

The hero.

I don’t know if it’s me, but Barclay didn't grab me the way I wanted to. And I admit a lot of it is because of the current political climate. The Tory party is the one behind Brexit. The party of Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and Margaret Thatcher. I had a hard time rooting for him because for all that he was a nice guy, he's still on the political side of a party that has caused a great deal of harm to marginalized people. It’s like I said in a recent post, you may claim not to be a racist but if you support a racist institution and work to keep it in power then you are, in fact, a racist. That’s true here. The Tories are doing that in Britain just like the Republicans are doing that in the United States.

Barclay may care deeply about his brother. But he still felt his brother’s HIV diagnosis would hurt his political career.  This is something that actually happened in the book!!! 

He may like Kira’s quirkiness, but dear Gods is he embarrassed by it. He’s selfish. He does things that make it difficult for Kira to do her job effectively and doesn’t apologize for it. Because he doesn’t care about the people Kira is helping only himself.

So I didn't really like him.

Unfortunately, my dislike of the hero played into my "meh" feeling regarding the romance. It didn't land for me. The chemistry felt forced. It’s also the main reason I didn’t like The Duke, the Lady, and a Baby by Vanessa Riley.

I'm also leery of obsessed-fan hooks up with the object of their obsession and finds true love. As someone who has had to be the person to stand between the fan and the person they're obsessed with, I can tell you this isn't how it works. I’ve read a few other stories with this trope and it really bugs me. Probably because of the objectification but also because of my own experiences with being stalked.

Back to the good.

The writing is on point. Funny. Witty. Great banter. Seriously I really love Susie Tate's writing. The scenes with Henry and Kira's friends are some of the best. The creative nicknames and insults are faboo. I will need to add some of them to my repertoire.

Since Tate is a doctor herself in Britain the medical stuff is on point. I loved the scenes where Kira got to show just how awesome a doctor she was. Give me competence porn, I am so here for that.

The story toes the line on sexy. It's steamy and acknowledges that sex takes place but most of the scenes are closed door or hinted at. So people looking for super clean, this likely isn't for you. Nor is this for someone who wants spank bank material in their romance. I wasn’t in the mood for sex at the moment, so this worked. But I don’t like the moralizing that’s often in so-called “clean romances”... sometimes you don’t have to have explicit sex to have a good romance.

Back to the not so good. I wasn't the biggest fan of the ending. It was okay. Not bad, per se. Just not my cup of tea. I like to see more agency in my leads, and while Barclay had agency in his storyline, Kira did not.

Ask my editing clients and one of the things I tend to ding them on is characters, especially their female leads, having agency in their own stories. That they’re the ones driving the story arc and not the other characters -- particularly the male characters.

So while Kira’s story was resolved, she didn’t have a lot of agency in it. Which fed into Barclay tramping up and down all over her agency.

This book needs a whole heap of content warnings including: depression, suicidal ideation, frank discussion of STIs, frank discussion of HIV/AIDS, Medical truama, medical neglect (not by the heroses), sexual harassment, workplace sexual harassment, parental neglect/abandonment, mentions of past child neglect/abandonment, mentions of stillbirth/miscarriage, ableistic language in regards to mental illness, sexual assault, use of the g-slur in reference to clothing/appearance (This was not in reference to the Irish Travellers who do call themselves by the g-slur but in reference to clothing/appearance/lifestyle choices of two white characters.), use of food descriptors for POC skin (cappuchino instead of brown or Black), microaggressions in descriptions of natural hair (wild and unkempt). The last three are things that are easily correctable. But they are things that do exist and I hope the author educates herself as to why they are problems. (I provided links to some resources when I sent in my review so she can’t say that she wasn’t given sources. We’ll see where this goes.) In all, I liked and both disliked this book. I still love Kira. I loved Henry. Libby, Mark, and Millie are great as always. But because of the issues I've listed above I feel like I can only give this: Two Stars.

If this is your jam, you can get it here.

If you like these kind of honest reviews, please consider supporting us here!

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley

[surprisebitch]

oh god my mom gave the TALK again because she found my PrEP prescription.. saying she does not want me to hook up and to have a relationship. saying that sex should be reserved and that her first was my father.. and even said the life i chose is risky and even telling me that i could get struck by lightning. and she was so agitated and grilling me with questions if i have a fwb i can bring him home. and i just came home from being at uni for 10 hours so it took a lot of willpower for me to just say that i am very careful and i wouldnt be on PrEP if i wasnt and its FREE. and i dont wanna have a boyfriend right now cause i got a lot on my plate and it can be a time investment to have a relationship. she even said that she knows im fooling around and im like "well if i was which i have not for ages, at least i am careful" like she even said how there are mormon boys out there who are gay but abstain or reserve themselves for a true one and i just made her talk. but anyway things like this makes me wish i didnt come out but i guess its just the way it is. it really could be worse but its just annoying. i even have curfews at night and cant leave home late at night even when i say im going for a walk cause they get suspicious. and the only time i can is when im already outside and will be going home late cause they got no choice. ironically my dad is more cool about this. but he does discourage it and shares the same sentiment. i feel i will only have liberty in my life when i graduate and have that good starter job. like they still dont see me as an adult who makes decisions. like its annoying to have religious parents who have this conservative mindset. i love them but i wish they would just be educated bout sexual health and how technology has advanced. they still think being gay equals this huge 99% possibility to acquire HIV. especially she had a friend who died from it but like, that was way before the 90s. and times have changed but they still live in this mindset. like i do know they are being concerned i guess and care for me but i hope they would also respect me. there are many preventive tools too. anyway sorry i ranted

[skyguyed]

the normalization of abusive behavior in reylo

for those wondering why some people are calling reylo an abusive ship, below the divide are examples and explanations from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren displays abusive behavior towards Rey.

This is important because abusive/toxic actions in fiction are often normalized to the point where viewers may not notice abusive behaviors as red flags, or may grow to see abusive behavior as normal, even romantic (or valid precursors to romance).

This post will also discuss the role of fictional portrayals in shaping reality, and why I believe supporting reylo means normalizing abuse.

Thank you in advance for your time and energy to read this. 

The purpose of this post 

This post (essay, really, it’s gotten pretty long) will examine every interaction between Rey and Kylo Ren, and will point out where and how abuse occurs in this relationship. I will also discuss why this matters.

This post is not meant to police anyone or insult, nor is it meant to incite disrespectful arguments. It is not a call for censorship. The purpose of this post is to help unaware reylo shippers understand where and why reylo is abusive, to help fans recognize abusive behavior, to assess the relationship between fiction and reality, and to discuss why I believe supporting reylo means normalizing abuse.

Trigger warnings for mentions, descriptions, and discussions of violence, domestic violence, abuse, and rape.

Legal definition of abuse:

According to the judicial branch of California,

The domestic violence laws say “abuse” is:

Physically hurting or trying to hurt someone intentionally or recklessly;

Sexual assault;

Making someone reasonably afraid that he or she or someone else is about to be seriously hurt (like threats or promises to harm someone); OR

Behavior like harassing, stalking, threatening, or hitting someone, disturbing someone’s peace, or destroying someone’s personal property).

Read more about Domestic Violence.

What abusive behavior does reylo display?

Kylo Ren exhibits these types of abusive behaviors towards Rey (timestamps indicated when appropriate):

Immobilizing her 

Using the Force in the forest on Takodana (TFA, 1:17:32)

With physical restraints in First Order custody (TFA, 1:25:40)

Threatening her with a weapon 

With light saber, while she’s immobilized by him (TFA, 1:18:00)

Stalking her

“You still want to kill me.” “That happens why you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.” (TFA, 1:26:08)

Putting down her friends

“Where are the others?” “You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?” (TFA, 1:25:57)

Kylo Ren called Rey’s parents “filthy junk traders” (TLJ 1:48)

Hurting her friends: Finn, mortally (TFA, 1:54:42)

Not to mention killing his father Han in front of her, who had become someone she trusted.

Entering her (mind) without permission (confirmed by JJ Abrams as an intentional rape parallel in a Facebook post to Daniel Fleetwood, since deleted/made private - see summary here)

This happened twice- once on Takodana when he had her immobilized (TFA, 1:18:12), and then again in First Order custody: “You know I can take whatever I want.” (TFA, 1:27:00) despite her tears, fear, and obvious discomfort and protests

Threatening to expose her secrets (where is BB-8 and the map to Luke Skywalker)

Attacking her with a weapon

Also using the force to attack her (multiple times)

Rendering her unconscious (real world equivalent: drugging or physical violence)

First on Takodana with the Force, (TFA 1:13:32), then on Starkiller Base, by launching her into a tree (TFA 1:51:24)

Trying to manipulate her (into joining the Dark Side)

Snoke may have initiated their force bond, but as soon as Kylo realized what it was, he started using it to make Rey sympathize with him

Kylo Ren feeds Rey only part of his side of the story, painting himself as a victim (leaving out how he slaughtered/turned the other students, and what he did to concern Luke in the first place [re: the “darkness rising in him,” TLJ 1:00:33])

Gaslighting and verbal abuse: “You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You’re nothing... but not to me.”

“Your parents threw you away like garbage. You can’t stop needing them.” (TLJ 1:12:02) He hangs this over her head, again at TLJ 1:31. And “the truth” at 1:48.

Kylo also literally abducts Rey after knocking her out, although that isn’t on the cited list. And he frames her for murdering Snoke after she wouldn’t join him, which puts a huge target on her back. And um, tries to actually kill her (“BLOW THE PIECE OF JUNK -- OUT OF THE SKY!”)

Kylo’s own manipulation, abuse, and gaslighting by Snoke do not excuse his treatment of Rey. (Finn was abused and brainwashed, too. And he chose to turn better.)

Here are resources for abuse victims. 

Why the interrogation scene has clear rape parallels

This is not meant to cheapen or lessen the trauma faced by physical rape/assault victims. I understand that this comparison is upsetting to some people because, since it is presented on-screen as a parallel, it could be argued as much less severe or even be seen as trivializing the plight of real-life victims. I’m not trying to speak for all abuse victims when I say this, but as a person who has experienced sexual violation, I can’t help but see a clear parallel here. 

The interaction is highly invasive. Rey is terrified and protests when she is able to. Kylo Ren tells her shit like not to be afraid, etc. (which sounds like stuff abusers say). She tells him to stop (1:27:39) “Get out of my head” and still he proceeds, ignoring verbal and physical protests. This is not a healthy dynamic, and shouldn’t be portrayed as romantic, or as a prucursor to romance. It’s clearly violating, and it’s triggering to a lot of fans.

When we do not acknowledge this scene as a nonconsensual psychological invasion of a person, I believe we are glossing over an extremely vital dynamic in this relationship. The fact that Kylo says to Rey, “I can take whatever I want,” shows an entitlement to her mind and body that he doesn’t deserve, an attitude shared by many abusers. It creates a power difference that forces Rey to fight back to regain control from him. I’ve seen people argue that he was “gentle” but gentle violation is still violation.

But they’re at war.

This really doesn’t excuse Kylo’s actions towards Rey, sorry. And even if they are at war, this kind of behavior he’s exibited towards her thus far does not make a good foundation for a healthy relationship. That trauma, those offenses will still be there.  

Also, if they’re at war, Rey has every reason to fight back, so saying that “Rey abused Kylo Ren back” when he’s the perpetrator is a flimsy argument. Her ability to “kick his ass” does not make her immune to abuse. It also shifts the blame for Kylo’s mistreatment from him, to her, which is vastly unfair, echoing the victim-blaming sentiment that’s pervasive in our own reality, that real victims face.

Why do we care if Reylo is abusive? It’s just fiction.

We should care that Reylo is abusive because fiction reflects and influences reality. This TED Talk discusses how fiction changes people by increasing empathy, and changes a person’s point of view. Fiction is powerful in shaping a person’s actions. Reading fiction helps readers navigate a real social world. Additionally, fiction can spark public dialogue and raise attention to real-world issues. Reading fiction has been associated with an increase in charitable giving and voting (x).

Here are some examples of fiction influencing reality:

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was the first major US novel with a Black main character, and it “ opened reader’s eyes to the realities of slavery and the humanity of enslaved people.” “Stowe’s candor on the controversial subject of slavery encouraged others to speak out, further eroding the already precarious relations between northern and southern states and advancing the nation’s march toward Civil War.” (x) Conversely, in modern times, it has helped popularize harmful antiquated stereotypes of Black people (x).

Joe Biden attributed historic changes in American views of homosexuality to Will and Grace (1998), which influenced American views on LGBT rights and helped open the door to more programs with LGBT leads. 

Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) popularized BDSM and caused a spike in reported sex-related injuries, and has been accused of perpetuating dangerous abuse standards. A 2014 study showed correlation between the novel’s readers and eating disorders, abusive relationships, and binge drinking. 

Star Trek has been vastly influential. Astronaut Mae Jemison (the first Black woman in space) was inspired by Lt. Uhura. The show featured American TV’s first interracial on-screen kiss. Steve Wozniak cited Star Trek as an influence for co-founding Apple (x). Star Trek has encouraged many people to pursue a career in science (x).

Jaws (1974) caused beach attendance to fall the following summer, sparked an increase in shark trophy hunting, and demonized sharks in the public eye. (However, shark research received more funding.)

Six in ten Americans get their HIV/AIDS information from the media (x). Musicals like Rent (1993) helped humanize people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as LGBT people. Rent has also been cited as helping encourage LGBT people to come out.

The Turner Diaries (1978) is a novel cited by white supremacists.

Lolita’s (1955) sexualization of a 12-year-old girl has impact on modern celebrities wardrobe choices and image.

Black Beauty (1877) caused the bearing rein to be banned in Victorian England and inspired animal welfare activists.

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) portrayed harsh working conditions for immigrants in industrial areas, and raised awareness and produced public outcry which directly led to the passing of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, both in 1906.

After the release of 13 Reasons Why (2017), schools saw an increase in student self harm and suicides, and related internet searches. 

Psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fiction] narrative.” “For example,if we watch a TV program showing a sexual encounter gone wrong, our own sexual ethics will change... If, however, the show displays a positive sexual encounter, our own sexual attitudes will move towards the permissive end of the spectrum.”  (x pg 150)

In one study, 19% of respondents said that after finishing a work, a character’s voice stayed with them, influencing the tone of their thoughts (x).

More resources:

100 stories that changed the world

The power of fake gay (and black) friends: We form judgements about characters the same way we form judgements about people.

Readers may change their beliefs and thoughts to match a fictional character’s

The importance of framing in relationship portrayal, an essay by an abuse victim. This essay is very long but it is a must-read. It also touches on the fact that the power of fiction is more than just having fun and our experiences shape how we interpret media.

Abduction as Romance - a harmful trope where the abductor is framed as “a decent guy” at the end. (20-min video, well worth the watch.) Danger is portrayed as a sexy trait, while the disempowerment of women is fetishized. The video also comments on how often white guys get away with it, while men of color don’t. Also, see commentary at the end of the video about what real redemption means.

Yeah, but how does supporting reylo influence reality?

Supporting Reylo means that we’re giving credibility and validity to violence at the beginning of a romance. It’s like saying to a child who got pushed by another on the playground, “oh, they’re bullying you because they have a crush on you.” It’s promoting a fundamental entitlement and disrespect. 

Impressionable young people seeing this abuse treated as a desirable dynamic, as conditions that could lead to romance, are being primed to accept this or even emulate this in their own relationships. When we see this treated as acceptable in fiction, we are primed to see this as acceptable in reality.

Why not promote healthier dynamics? Why not rehearse the rejection of abusive behavior? 

 A look at canon

So, let’s not forget, that in canon, Rey and Kylo Ren are not in a relationship. So, some say, that means it’s impossible for this to be abuse. However, by suggesting that these characters should be in a relationship is harmful because it romanticizes rocky starts to relationships, and physically violent starts to relationships. 

More reasons why Kylo Ren is dangerous

While Kylo Ren has been shown in canon to be able to freeze or immobilize people, instead he mortally wounds Finn, who is clearly Rey’s friend and defender, in order to intimidate her and overpower her.

Not to mention that throughout the film, he displays characteristics of an abuser, such as violence towards others, (uh, murder), destruction of property, and other characteristics. It may be argued that these outbursts are symptoms of mental illness. It may also be argued that Kylo Ren is a victim of abuse himself, by Snoke. However, none of this excuses his shitty behavior. Being mentally ill or also an abuse victim does not grant one a free pass to act abusive towards others. 

Kylo Ren also tortures and invades and abuses Poe Dameron. Thank god I haven’t seen anyone shipping them. Kylo Ren is an abuser, y’all. 

Oh and one more thing? Kylo Ren never uses Rey’s name in the TFA; he doesn’t see her as a person, just an object to overpower, an obstacle to beat down. He doesn’t use her name until The Last Jedi, when he begins to try to manipulate her, rather than indimidate her with force alone. Then she becomes a tool to him. Clearly he still doesn’t value her as a whole person. Again, not romantic. Dangerous and toxic.

Why I’m still against Reylo even if Kylo is redeemed

It’s not a woman’s responsibility to “fix a damaged man.” (It’s not anyone’s responsibility to use romance to “fix” anyone, actually. Romance is not a cure for abuse.) The burden of redemption should be on the villain alone. Kylo had plenty of opportunities to accept help. Additionally, we shouldn’t support abusive behavior as a start or precursor to romance, because that’s a really harmful message to send. And, previous acts of violence are the biggest predictors of future violence, so I’m wary of them entering a relationship without significant amounts of therapy and reform on Kylo’s part.

What do we do from here?

Don’t support Reylo. That’s it. No conditionals. No “well if they change” no “well they’re fictional so they can be written differently” no AUs, no. Please don’t promote a relationship that is based in abuse. 

I’m not saying we need to sanitize our fiction of abuse or of abusive relationships. That’s not going to make them go away in real life. I’m not trying to censor or silence anything. I’m trying to make sure that abusive relationships are CLEARLY FRAMED as abusive, and not promoted, normalized, or glorified in any way. (See my previous post discussing this.)

Have fun, but understand that fiction is powerful and influential, and it’s our responsibility to engage with it in a way that supports healthy relationships.

[fuzziekins]

I would like to ask you all of the pride questions from that one post.

Dammit Steve XD

Gender and pronouns?  Female and she/her are fine, as far as i know i’m cis. i don’t care if you call me dude, though. Dude can be anyone.

Romantic orientation? i use demi-whatromantic, with demiromantic as the microlabel. Most people know whatromantic as quoiromantic or quoi. i think what/quoi is typically known as a microlabel, but i relate to that more and feel it describes me more compared to demi which is why i focus more on that aspect.

Sexual orientation? In lamest terms? Asexual. In my terms? Stereotypical ace. In specific terms? S-x repulsed asexual.

Past labels you’ve used? i didn’t use anything before discovering asexuality because naive and oblivious, as far as i know. Before demi-whatromantic i briefly used demiromantic as a placeholder even though that didn’t totally feel right on its own.

How long have you been using your current labels? Asexual since late October 2017 and officially, or i guess out, since February 2018. Demi-whatromantic i think has been for maybe 6ish months now?

What made you pick your name? i had no say in my name lol. I haven’t changed it at all

What names have you gone by previously? Unless nicknames count for anything, just my regular boring name.

What names have you considered using? i’ve only ever considered using other names for me as a Pokemon trainer in the games which is obviously not the same. But, for the record, every time i start a game using the male trainer i’d use the name Larry.

Do you like your flag(s)? i don’t focus on the demiromantic flag as much, only because i feel less of the connection to compared to ace and what. The asexual flag has definitely given me a new appreciation for purple, but as a former art student i’ve been taught that black is typically the absence or color and white encompasses all the colors. so i do wish the ace flag had more colors just so i can stop referring to purple as the “only” color. i definitely appreciate and like the look of the whatromantic flag, but i don’t think as many people are aware of what it looks like or that it even exists. i especially love the shade of blue used in it.

Favorite flag(s) visually? Gonna be unoriginal and say the gay pride flag just because i love rainbows. 

Favorite colors? Blue has always been a favorite of mine, and i used to gravitate mostly towards lighter shades of purple but now i just include purple in general.

Favorite animals? Puppies, kitties, bunnies, hamsters, monkeys, ponies.... Actually, probably best just to say adorable fluffy animals.

Favorite things about being LGBT+? i like having an explanation for being me. i don’t look my age to begin with and i definitely don’t act like it. So people assuming there’s something wrong with me mentally because of it, or wanting to avoid me in general.... i know people have their feelings about stereotypes and a lot of times it is negative, but for me knowing that a stereotypical ace basically describes who i am, it feels reassuring. And i like knowing that i don’t have to act or think or do completely of what’s expected of me because in a heteronormative world, being LGBT+ completely flips that around. Even if to me, it doesn’t always feel like i have a place because i don’t know many queer people and i don’t get involved in things in general, somewhere in my mind i know that there’s a place for me.

Are you dysphoric? Not that i know of.

Are you religious? Nope. i don’t fast, i don’t keep kosher, i don’t go to temple, i never went to Hebrew school.... But it doesn’t make me any less connected to my religion and, as selfish as it sounds, i still wanna make a point of it and remind people, hey us Jews exist, too!

Are you questioning your identity? Some parts of it i do question sometimes, mostly in terms of aesthetic attraction. But i fluctuate with including that attraction in my identity. And i do question how much, if at all it does or could play a part in my romantic attraction. 

Are you in a relationship? Haha, funny. Nope.

Are you out of the closet IRL? For the most part, yes. It’s primarily in terms of saying i’m asexual or just queer, but part of that depends who i’m talking to, if or when it comes up in conversation, and how comfortable i feel talking to people about it.

Is your family supportive? i honestly don’t know if my extended family knows, even though i do post pride related things on my Instagram which some of them do follow and i have posted about it there. But, as annoyed as my mom can get with my ace jokes or comments sometimes, she accepts me for who i am and supports me, and has, probably before even knowing the term asexual existed, had an assumption a typical relationship happening for me was slim. And i know without a doubt that if my dad was still around he would definitely be supportive of me and not cared what i identified as, what i looked like, who i liked or didn’t like, or anything like that. 

Favorite LGBT+ celebrity or historical figure? Neil Patrick Harris is definitely one of them, and i think another favorite is probably Demi Lovato.

Favorite LGBT+ couple IRL? Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka. i love NPH and the family that he and David have are just the most precious things ever! Plus the way they go all out for Halloween every year? HELL. YES.

Favorite LGBT+ canon character? First one that comes to mind is Asami from Legend of Korra. Because Asami. Another one is Cyrus Goodman from Andi Mack. i loved watching his journey on the show and also knowing that there are kids who were watching Disney Channel that could not only relate to and look up to him as a queer character but also as a queer Jewish character. Plus he was just the most precious character and i just wanted to hug him!

Favorite LGBT+ canon fictional couple? Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra; Stef and Lena from The Fosters; Kat and Adena from The Bold Type.

Some characters you headcanon as LGBT+? Elsa and Honeymaren from Frozen 2. Don’t get me started, i will NEVER shut up. I’m going down with that ship.

Some LGBT+ pairings you ship? i know i already said Kat and Adena from the Bold Type. As of the current season they are - spoiler - not together and have not been done the justice to them as characters or their relationship. I continue to ship them, i love the chemistry the actors always have between them and how believable it is for their characters, and i’m just anxiously waiting for the day when they can hopefully FINALLY get back together.

Any celebrity crushes? If by crushes you mean celebrities i admire, look up to, think are cute, and would probably watch almost any show or movie if they were in it? Zendaya. The same has also applied to Corbin Bleu.

Any fictional crushes? As long as the same rule applies to the previous question and also includes being obsessed yet completely in control of that obsession and that character is also a muse for creativity? Elsa.

A trope you dislike about your identity? Probably that it’s a phase or i just haven’t met the right person yet. It took me probably too long to know let alone even understand why i didn’t think so much of romance or relationships and why i was never looking for or really wanting an actual relationship. For the most part, that’s been my whole life so to say my whole life is just some kind of phase or imply that i’m living it wrong? Just. No.

A trope about your identity that applies to you? Maybe this falls more under the stereotypical asexual label, but that aces can be very childlike. i’ve always been a kid at heart, i never really acted like my age, and yeah i can be really naive or clueless about a lot of things. 

Something you wish people understood about your identity? Probably just that people understood it’s an actual identity. It’s not a choice, it’s not a phase. It’s not a label someone created just to be able to fit in somewhere or for sh-ts and giggles. It’s an actual, legitimate, real identity. 

Something you dislike about being LGBT+? I feel like i can’t fully comment on it because sometimes i don’t fully feel LGBT+. Not having more than a couple of friends who identify as queer, not actively getting involved in the community or really wanting to be around people in general...i can only say what i dislike based on what i’ve seen online. And what i don’t like is that the LGBT+ community is supposed to be that - a community. It’s supposed to be a place where we can all relate to each other somehow, support each other and rely on each other. It’s supposed to be a place where, regardless of what label or how many labels we use, if we’re not straight it’s our place. We belong. But people still find a way to want to kick people out or treat people badly just because they don’t understand or agree on the label. Or maybe they don’t like or understand why someone chose a certain label or doesn’t have one at all or just uses queer. People still find a way to exclude and ignore and that’s not fair at all.

If you’re not cis, do you want HRT and/or surgery?

If you’re not straight, who was your first same-gender crush? Are we still going by either of my crush definitions from earlier....?

Do you align with any gay subcategories? (Butch/femme, bear/twink, etc.) Not that i know of. I don’t think i even know a lot, or maybe any of the subcategories at all besides those mentioned.

Do you have any LGBT+ idols? Elton John is the one that comes to mind. Knowing the life he had, the addictions he struggled with and ultimately overcame, becoming an activist and philanthropist especially for HIV/AIDS, growing up on his music... He dealt with a lot and has gone through so much but he’s come out so much stronger and has not only had a successful career but has also tried to do his part to help others for a cause that he believes in. 

Do you own pride merch? Would you like to? A pride hat, 2 pride scarves, a few pride pins, an asexual lanyard.... i would definitely like to have a t-shirt with an ace pun at it at some point, though.

Do you have a type in partners? Probably water. Or were you talking about actual human partners and not Pokemon partners in the games?

Do you have a type in friends? i actually don’t think i chose any of my friends. As far as i can think of, all of the friends i do have came into my life kind of by accident or by chance and they’re the ones who have stuck around. i do think most of my friends though have senses of humors and are loyal, although the closest ones are definitely WAY more levelheaded than i am! XD

[touchmycoat]

book reflections: Confessions by Minato Kanae

Confessions

The heart of this book deals with revenge. It's a familiar theme: when a heinous crime has been committed, are criminal justice procedures ever enough? To what degree is revenge, personally exacted, justified?

Confessions complicates this question by throwing the spikes of tension between children and adults.

Children are such a fascinating subject of study—not to go too far into it, but “childhood” is very much a socially constructed phenomenon (my formative understanding of this is Kathryn Bond Stockton's The Queer Child, which narrates a history of adults-depicting-children, and the values and anxieties that reveals). Confessions asks the question, “what happens when children commit heinous crimes?”

The book begins with a monologue by middle school teacher Moriguchi on the last day of the semester. What first seems like philosophical rambling lays out a multi-layered social phenomenon.

Layer one: social inclination to believe that children are always the victim, never the perpetrator. This is outlined in the story about the teacher who was called out by a female middle school student seemingly in need of help one night, then accused of sexual assault. The student later confessed it was because she wanted revenge—the teacher had scolded her for chatting during class. The teacher was forced to reveal, under these circumstances, that she's trans, and that she had no designs on the student in question (which is certainly a narrative choice to think further about—the quickness of the anecdote and the inherent logic it's meant to convey, that simply by proving herself a woman, the teacher convinced her coworkers that she's exonerated of all suspicion. At least trans identity isn't being inherently linked with deviance?). The teacher was still fired, and the school instituted a new policy that should students ever call teachers for help after school, only male teachers can go to male students, female teachers to female students, etc.

(The narrative, in its determination to gesture to the incapability of institutions to fulfill human needs, uses this as the ignition point for Naoki's unhappiness with Moriguchi.)

Layer two: children receive public anonymity in the court of law, meaning punishment is dealt in secret, and presumably, they can return to society afterwards carrying none of their criminal history. This is outlined in the “Lunacy” case, where a young girl kills her own family with cyanide, after conducting a series of experiments on what poison was most effective. The case got plenty of sensationalist press coverage, but where is the girl now, Moriguchi asks. Has she gotten her punishment? Was justice ever exacted?

Layer three: sensationalist press coverages without embedded moral value only teach children the outliers. At worst, it teaches children that this is the way to get attention (which is precisely what Shuya and Mizuki took from the Lunacy case). Moral outrage loses ground to morbid fascination, becoming worse than an empty gesture; like the teacher who replaces Moriguchi, posturing as some beacon of moral justice is merely for self-satisfaction.

Maybe, more accurately, the book wants to know, “how do you punish a child?” Some, like Moriguchi's not-husband, like Moriguchi insinuates the juvenile criminal justice system to be, answer, “you don't.” Children are products of their environment, so the ones who should be punished are the teachers (as posited by the “Lunacy” case and the chemistry teacher who got all the public blame for giving the child access to cyanide). Alternatively, children are still learning and growing. Moriguchi's not-husband was quite the problem child himself, but he turned things around and became the most truly moral figure of this entire book. He believes in the capacity for change in children.

But Moriguchi doesn't care much about that. Shuya and Naoki plotted to and killed her four-year-old daughter. She wants revenge.

What makes her fascinating as the central figure of this book is her clarity of mind. She isn't someone who's lost herself to vengeance; she systematically identifies the flaws (or what she thinks of as flaws) in the juvenile criminal justice system and then chooses her own revenge. On one hand we have the empathetic response to a mother losing her child, and the willingness to let a fictional character play out, for emotional catharsis, something we might not necessarily endorse in real life. On the other hand we have the unease of her turning this calculatedness toward children: Boy A and Boy B, middle school students.

(Cue comparative cinema studies of the 2010 Confessions film and 2007's Boy A. Oh, apparently Boy A is based off of a novel as well?)

Oh, and then she does take her revenge. She says she's laced Boy A and Boy B's milk cartons with HIV-infected blood.

And now, in what is the true brilliance of the book, Confessions starts to give us other perspectives. We get Mizuki the perfect student, who is first victimized by the hoard of angry classmates (and it's such a consistent literary and real life theme I guess, the cruelty of a mass of children). We get a peak into her questionability in a somewhat tender moment though: why does she just have a poison-testing kit lying around? In this section, we also get a protagonistic portrayal of Shuya; it's not that we doubt Moriguchi's version of the psychopathic-child-inventor Shuya, but now he's the martyr (as per the title of the section). He quietly suffers the bullying of the class, tells Mizuki his negative blood test, and becomes “genuinely” happy at Mizuki's compliments, saying all he's ever wanted was that acknowledgement.

Mizuki also bares her teeth against the new teacher, accusing him of being the cause of Naoki's mother's murder. At this point, it was almost narratively heroic, after we've suffered the annoyance (through her perspective) of the self-important teacher. But afterwards, in Shuya's section, we hear her confess to wanting to poison that teacher for “ruining Naoki's life.” She's killed by Shuya before we hear more, but might that have played out? How much do we fear the mental criminality of children?

We also get Naoki's sister and mother's perspective. We get a doting mother insistent on the innocence of her child, making excuse after excuse for Naoki, even when Naoki's fully confessed to throwing Moriguchi's daughter into the pool. How much responsibility does a parent have toward her child? Does she hold ultimate faith in him, stand staunchly at his side in support of him? Does she do right by the society (and in theory by her kid) by turning in her own child? We were meant to be annoyed by her cruel insistence to blame everyone but her son, but we see in Naoki's section right after that his sanity relied so much on this idea that his mother unconditionally loves him. He believes that, once he's gone to jail for his crimes, he can do his time, reform and return to society as long as his mother is there to love and support him.

Of course, that's when his mother decides to kill both him and herself—a murder-suicide for her failure as a mother.

(It really does haunt me, thinking about Naoki and his stymied possibilities. He killed Moriguchi's daughter in a moment of callous spite, motivated by a desire for revenge against Shuya's dismissal of his overtures of friendship. He lived in such a tortured state for a long time, a child grappling with the terror of impending death by himself, terrified of infecting those who love him. His instincts, when he emerged into the real world again, was to weaponize his “infected” blood. Yet he ended up on such a hopeful incline—mother's love with save me. All this happens as his mother spirals downwards, coming to terms with her own child's monstrosity. The book seeds Naoki's redemption, but takes the sprout away before we can see whether or not it carries infection.)

Finally, we get Shuya's story. I fully bought into it, as I was expected to. The book gestures multiple times at his ability to pen a convincing narrative of innocence. Or at least, a narrative of the anti-hero. He walks us through his absolute love for his mother, the engineering genius. She gave up her career for him, but then turned that dissatisfaction into abuse. Abuse turned back to gestures of love when she was found out, divorced, and forced to move away, and Shuya held deeply on to his faith that he will be reunited with her again. The desire of a child for his mother's love motivated the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, the planting of a bomb at the school festival. It ended up killing Mizuki as well.

Moriguchi bookends this tale, tying up loose threads. Yes she absolutely put the blood in their milk, but it was her not-husband that swapped out the infected cartons. Yes, she wanted to destroy Shuya and Naoki's lives; it won't bring her joy and it won't bring her daughter back, but nonetheless she wants her vengeance on the two boys. The possibility that she was only scaring Naoki and Shuya, that she threatened to but never did anything actually immoral, is completely swept away. She tells Shuya she visited his mother and told her all of his crimes. Baiting Shuya with what his mother said, she instead tells him that the bomb he planted had been deconstructed at the school and reconstructed in his mother's lab instead. Making the bomb and detonating it had both been Shuya's choice.

Shuya had killed her daughter. Now she's killed his mother.

(But did she? I have no doubt she did, but this book doesn't deal in absolutes.)

So—what are we left with? A psychopathic child inventor-slash-murderer motivated by a desire for maternal love? A girl who admired another murderous young murderess and wanted a turn of her own with poisons, murdered before she could prove herself either way? A cruel and reactionary accomplice who came to the conclusion that he had done something wrong but that he could repent? A mother who refused her son's criminality until the very last moment, and believed they were both beyond salvation?   Another mother who took justice into her own hands by ruining the lives of two young boys who killed her daughter in cold blood?

...Is there such a thing as cold blood in this novel? Every “cold” act was done with passionate motive: Shuya wanted to prove himself to his mother, Naoki wanted to prove himself better than Shuya, Moriguchi wanted to give her daughter proper vengeance. HIV is the symbol here of criminality, first given, then saved from, then weaponized by both boys. There's so much, with the blood! Naoki coming to terms with the infection he didn't have made it possible for him to confess the truth, to start himself on the path toward salvation (even if it only lasted a few pages). Shuya embracing the infection right away because if he were dying his mother would surely come back; losing that possibility of death led to him befriending, then of course in the end murdering Mizuki.

Shuya plotted the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, but wasn't actually responsible for the cause of death. Naoki was the accomplice, but at the last moment, made the choice to actually extinguish her daughter's life. This murky twist of motion and motive (Kathryn Bond Stockton!) would prevent them from getting the full punishment of homicide in a juvenile criminal justice court, as Moriguchi explained. Now, because of the blood, they've both committed an inarguable murder with their own hands. Naoki loses his mother and his entire world order that revolved around her unconditional love for him. Shuya's murderous inventions are never allowed to succeed, and he never gets to “prove” his genius, until it was used to kill his own mother, the one person he wanted acknowledge from and to live with. The punishments are incredibly cruel—but are they justified?

[calunavulgaris]

I’d like to think that anyone who knows me knows that I am 100% pro-choice, but in case it needs to be said: I am unapologetically, completely, irrevocably pro-choice.

There are two main reasons for this, the first being that I have known from a very early age that I never wanted to be pregnant or give birth. The idea is beyond horrifying to me. The second is much less personal. I have never encountered an anti-choice argument that wasn’t laughably easy to dismantle. I’ve been vocally pro-choice for roughly 30 years now (thanks, Mom) and in that time one thing has become painfully evident: anti-choicers have nothing but tenuous, easily debunked “arguments” that are based solely on emotional manipulation, anecdotes, and pseudo-science. They’re also dreadfully unoriginal and repetitive. It gets dull, let me tell you.

But what the hell, just for fun let’s go through some of them here:

“Abortion is MURDER!”

Nope. Murder is a legal term with a clear, concise definition. Abortion does not meet the criteria. Go ahead and look that up, it’s pretty easy to find.

“Abortion KILLS BABIES!”

It’s funny how those who claim to be on the side of science (which is ridiculous on its own) resort to unscientific terms when their goal is to evoke a purely emotional response, isn’t it? “Killing babies” packs more of a manipulative punch than “a medical procedure involving the removal of fetal tissue.” Believe it or not, I sympathize if the termination of a fetus squicks you. I get it. Being that I’m pro-choice, I will always defend your right not to ever undergo the procedure with the same fervour I employ when defending the choice to obtain an abortion. That’s what it means to be pro-choice.

“The fetus is innocent and has a right to life!”

By definition, the fetus can’t be innocent or guilty, it is purely neutral. The “right to life” does not grant anyone the right to use any part of another person’s body for their survival, no matter how “innocent” that person may be. The person carrying the fetus also has the right to life and bodily autonomy, and having sex/being pregnant isn’t something one can be “guilty” of, as neither is a crime. If we want to talk about innocence, let’s start there.

“What about the rights/autonomy of the fetus?”

For starters, the fetus has no autonomy. Its survival is completely dependent on the person whose body it’s inhabiting. That person is fully autonomous and must consent to their body being used and occupied by the fetus.

I know this is repetitive, but it seems to need repeating: There is no human right granted to anyone to use any part of another human’s body, living or dead, for their survival. If you’re in need of an organ transplant, and someone has just died with the organ you need, that doesn’t grant you the right to take what you need from them unless they consented to it before their death. You don’t have the right to take their completely viable organs that they are no longer using if that person did not sign up to be a donor, and it doesn’t matter if you will die as a result. If I’ve been stabbed and am bleeding out, and will die unless given a blood transfusion, no one can be legally compelled to give me their blood to save my life. Not even my own mother. Not even if she was the one who stabbed me in the first place.

If no one has the right to a dead person’s organs or their mother’s blood, what right does a fetus have to another person’s entire body?

“You shouldn’t get to kill a baby just because you’re too lazy to use contraception!”

Please, tell me which form of contraception is 100% effective 100% of the time. Even a minuscule failure rate (based on perfect use) means that unintended conception will occur. I have personally met several people who conceived/were conceived themselves despite multiple forms of contraception being used. It happens. If someone uses two or three methods in tandem, I think they’re making it pretty clear that they do NOT wish to conceive, don’t you? And sure, some do decide to continue with the pregnancy (I think the best reaction I ever heard along these lines was “I need to meet the person who could get past all that!). Again, that’s their choice.

Yes, some people conceive because they neglected to use contraception, for whatever reason. Those reasons are no one’s business but their own. Having unsafe sex is not a crime and isn’t something people need to be punished for. More on that coming up in the next point.

“Abstinence is 100% effective! You made the choice to have sex, deal with the consequences!”

Electing to have an abortion is one way to deal with the consequences. It’s just one that some find immoral, or icky, or selfish. Thankfully, morals are subjective, and it isn’t a crime to be selfish or icky. Even if it were, using forced pregnancy (which the UN defines as a form of torture) as a punishment is unconscionable and inhumane.

Also, what do you suggest for childfree couples? Believe it or not, there are people in long-term, committed, loving, healthy relationships who don’t wish to have children. Should they be condemned to lifelong abstinence because there’s a chance they might conceive? Have fun trying to sell that one.

Consent to sex does not equal consent to pregnancy. Now, imagine that it wasn’t consensual to begin with. (This is where they like to bring up the statistic of abortions as a result of rape, because they live in a world where every instance of sexual assault is reported, and every victim discloses how they came to be pregnant.)

We don’t deny medical care to those who develop lung cancer due to their 20-year pack-a-day habit, or those who drink themselves into liver failure. If a drunk driver causes a collision, we don’t stand by and let them die from their injuries, even if the collision caused the death of others. But somehow, there are those who think a person with a uterus should literally be tortured and have their human rights revoked if a fetus is inhabiting that uterus. That is terrifying.

“What about the father? The fetus is 50% his so he should have a say!”

It may be 50% his genetic material, but it is 100% inhabiting another person’s body, which is why that person gets to make the final call.

Let’s break down what’s being implied here: If a couple conceives and the pregnant person wants to abort, they should obtain permission from their partner in order to do so. If he disagrees, they should respect that and carry the pregnancy to term. That doesn’t seem very 50-50 anymore, does it? I think it’s funny that this argument only seems to work under the assumption that the father would want to continue with the pregnancy. If he felt it would be best to terminate and his partner disagreed, would they still argue that his vote somehow carries more weight? I doubt it.

“You shouldn’t have an abortion just because pregnancy is inconvenient!”

“Inconvenient?!” Dude. A hangnail is inconvenient. Missing a parcel delivery and having to go to the post office is inconvenient. Your cat’s preference for hacking up hairballs on your clean laundry instead of the tile floor is inconvenient. To call pregnancy “inconvenient” is absurd in the extreme. Pregnancy, even under the best conditions, permanently alters a person’s body. I dare you to tell someone who has been through pregnancy and labour that it was merely “inconvenient.” Seriously, look up third-and-fourth degree tears, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, abdominal separation, etc. just for starters, and then tell me it’s just inconvenient.

“Post-abortive women suffer from depression and mental illness!”

Find me an unbiased source to back that up, please. It simply isn’t true, the majority of people who have undergone an abortion report feeling relieved. Also, what kind of an effect do you imagine forcing an unwanted pregnancy and birth on an unwilling person has on their mental health? Hell, wanted pregnancies can take a huge toll on a person’s mental health, but I don’t see anyone using postpartum depression to argue against pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood.

“Doctors don’t know everything! I knew someone whose doctor said their pregnancy was unviable and they should terminate, but they didn’t and now they have a beautiful, perfect child!”

Cool story. I’m glad this person was able to make that choice for themselves and that things turned out okay. I’m still gonna trust the advice of someone who invested their time and money into getting a medical degree over the anecdote of an internet stranger, but that’s me.

“Infertile couples would be so happy to have your baby! Just give it up for adoption!”

I don’t know if you’re aware, but there is no shortage of children in need of families. There is, however, a shortage of people willing to adopt older children, or non-white babies/children, children and babies who are born addicted, HIV+, severely disabled/medically fragile... I could go on.

Getting back to the “Doctors don’t know everything!” point, it may be worth noting that I used to work in a foster home with severely disabled children. It was by far the hardest, most heartbreaking and exhausting job I’ve ever had. I have seen firsthand what these kids go through, how much around-the-clock care they require, how forgotten some of them are by their families, and how they are considered “undesirable” as far as adoption goes. I have seen how they suffer. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it would have been better for any of them if they hadn’t been born, but I fully understand if someone is simply not up to the task of devoting their life to caring for a child who will be completely dependent on them for everything for however long they live, which sadly isn’t long for many of them. I’m glad I did it, but not everyone can, and there is nothing wrong with admitting that.

All of that aside, adoption is only an alternative to parenthood, not pregnancy. No one owes you the use of their uterus to house a fetus you want just because you’re unable to make your own.

This is already longer than I originally intended, but I think I’ve covered the most commonly recycled arguments. The rest mainly boil down to “Abortion goes against my personal theological/philosophical beliefs or moral code!” and all I can say in response to that is that I’m so glad I don’t have to live by anyone’s concept of morality and am allowed my own. It’s pretty great.

I won’t be complacent, however. I have never been more terrified in my life as a uterus-bearing person as I am right now, and I know I’m not alone in that. We cannot allow our rights to be revoked. We cannot afford to lose the ground those before us fought so hard to gain. I will do all I can to keep that from happening.

If the right to our bodies isn’t worth fighting for, I don’t know what is.

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Frances Mercer runs a fight club.

In one corner, the parasite Trichomonas vaginalis, which causes a widespread sexually transmitted infection that many people have never heard of. In the other corner are neutrophils, the immune system cells best equipped to take down the aggressor.

Watching the two battle it out, Mercer, an immunoparasitologist at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, has learned a lot about the parasite. And she’s shown exactly how neutrophils manage to take down T. vaginalis — using a maneuver that scientists didn’t even know the immune cells possessed.

A focus on T. vaginalis has been a long time coming. In 2016, the parasite was responsible for about 156 million worldwide cases of the sexually transmitted infection called trichomoniasis in men and women. In the United States, trichomoniasis is the third most common sexually transmitted infection after HPV, or human papillomavirus, and herpes.

Today, scientists are just beginning to get a handle on how the parasite causes trouble — including increasing risk for HIV infection, infertility and preterm delivery — and how the human immune system fights back. Complicating the picture is the fact that T. vaginalis doesn’t work alone. Other microbes living inside the vagina, and some inside the parasite itself, get into the fray.

Not just a nuisance

The infection “is not taken very seriously; it’s thought of as making women a bit itchy down there,” says Jane Carlton, a parasitologist at the New York University Center for Genomics and Systems Biology. As its name suggests, T. vaginalis colonizes the vagina, but it can also find a home in the urethra, which carries urine, in both men and women.

156 million: Estimate of worldwide cases of trichomoniasis in men and women in 2016

“One person’s nuisance infection is another person’s raving, itchy, hot, burning infection,” Carlton adds. About one-third or more of women who have an infection will have itch, discomfort or discharge — probably due to the action of the immune cells fighting the parasite, Mercer says.

About 5 to 10 percent of infected men suffer similar symptoms. The infection can be treated with metronidazole, a parasite-killing antibiotic, but about 5 percent of parasites are resistant to the drug.

Left untreated, trichomoniasis can have long-term consequences. The infection about doubles a woman’s chances of acquiring HIV. The risk might go up, Mercer says, because the parasite damages the barrier between the vaginal wall and the rest of the body, or because it causes an influx of the immune system’s T cells, which are the target of HIV infections. The parasite also interferes with female fertility and pregnancy. In men, T. vaginalis has been tentatively linked to infertility and prostate cancer.

Plus, the parasite can infect the same person more than once. Unlike with many other microbes, the immune system seems to be lousy at remembering how to fight T. vaginalis. The invader may even manipulate the immune response to block that memory, speculates Daniele Dessì, a microbiologist at the University of Sassari in Italy, with a touch of awe: “This is quite amazing for such a primitive organism.”

T. vaginalis is one of three species of trichomonad that infect humans. Scientists think trichomonads, single-celled protozoans, may have been among the first organisms to branch off the evolutionary tree after the rise of the original eukaryote, the ancestor of all animals, plants, fungi and protozoans.

“Learning about Trichomonas vaginalis is like learning about our own origins — who we were at the beginning,” says parasitologist Augusto Simoes-Barbosa of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. “Probably our ancestor was a very complex organism.”

At some point in its history — scientists don’t know when — T. vaginalis found the vagina a suitable place to live. It’s a good choice, points out Carlton: warm, moist, with plentiful sources of nutrition. Plus, men provide a convenient shuttle service to the next vagina.

Transmitted by sexual contact, the pear-shaped parasite swims into the vagina, paddling with tail-like flagella. T. vaginalis then sprawls out, amoeba-like, among the cells lining the vagina and cervix, rupturing them and eating the pieces.

[stephenmccull]

Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can’t even remember how many times he’s had it.

This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, KQED and KHN. It can be republished for free.

“Three or four? Five times in my life?” he struggles to recall. “It does not seem like a big deal.”

At the time, about a decade ago, Lemon went on frequent methamphetamine binges, kicking his libido into overdrive and silencing the voice in his head that said condoms would be a wise choice at a raging sex party.

“It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision-making abilities are skewed,” said Lemon, who is 50.

He’s sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco — which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon said syphilis comes with the territory.

“In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis,” he said.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low that public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001. From 2015 to 2019 alone, cases rose 74%. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In California and the U.S., about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the West who have syphilis also use meth, which has surged in recent years. These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies, who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: Congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to covid-19, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

“We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time,” said Dr. Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist. “Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic.”

There’s No Single Cause

Many factors have contributed to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In San Francisco’s gay community, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date “faster than getting pizza delivered to your home,” said Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men’s health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don’t always know the names of the men they hook up with.

“They sometimes only know their online handle,” said Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at the medical school of the University of California-San Francisco and author of “Strange Bedfellows,” about the history of STDs. “And if the sex didn’t go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don’t even know how to reach that person again.”

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV-positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV-negative but considered at risk for contracting the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, said Park.

“If one man is taking PrEP and the other one is virally suppressed, there’s no HIV risk at all,” she said. “So why use condoms if you don’t mind having a touch of syphilis?”

Diagnosing Syphilis Is Tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness or brain damage — it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, said Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, “lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis,” craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She said doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren’t trained on where to look, or when.

“The patient came in saying, ‘I’m tired,’” Park said, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. “How many people are going to say, ‘Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum. I want to look’? We only do that at the STD clinic because that’s what we do.”

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law, intended to expand access to health care, actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

“Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren’t going to be necessary,” Dr. Karen Smith said in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She said that, once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

“We sort of all assumed that if you’ve got health insurance and you’ve got access to a doctor, that’s all that you need,” she said. “It turns out that that’s not really all that you need.”

People still had affairs they didn’t want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn’t want to probe into patients’ sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents’ purview.

“That loss of anonymous care really was a problem,” Smith said.

The Syphilis Epidemic Reaches Babies, Too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she’d become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looked like a blueberry muffin. She thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It’s important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

“The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable,” she said. “This is something that’s completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy.”

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, reaching a high of 1,870 cases, an increase of 279% in five years. That is higher than the number of mother-to-child HIV cases at their peak in 1991.

“How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we’ve been using since the ’40s still works,” said Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. “And yet we have this completely out-of-control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society.”

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs — mainly methamphetamine — and are often homeless, said Smith, the former California public health director. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food or drugs. Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize they’re pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

“They’re very concerned about what’s going to happen when they’re found to be pregnant and using drugs,” said Smith. “They’re concerned that their drug use will be reported and then … their children will be taken away.”

The complications of these women’s lives also make disease investigation and contact tracing very challenging. Veteran contact tracer Romni Neiman remembers the difficulty she has had tracking down pregnant women in her career. Neiman works for the CDC, and before she was redirected to covid last year, she worked on preventing STDs, including congenital syphilis, in California.

She remembers looking for one woman in the late ’80s in Chicago. The pregnant woman used drugs and had been exposed to syphilis. Her housing was so unstable that Neiman went to three places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

“She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid,” Neiman recalled. “Sometimes it’s really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you’re like, ‘Wow. Wow.’”

Challenges like those, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, are what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis in Fresno County in the 2010s, said Park. Local contact tracers couldn’t keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, said Pan, the state epidemiologist, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy instead of once. And, rather than wait for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach and screening pregnant women in the emergency room and in prisons and jails.

Pan believes the covid pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a nimbler response to emerging and reemerging public health issues like syphilis.

“It’s been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure,” she said. “I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes KQED, NPR and KHN.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can’t even remember how many times he’s had it.

This story is from a partnership that includes NPR, KQED and KHN. It can be republished for free.

“Three or four? Five times in my life?” he struggles to recall. “It does not seem like a big deal.”

At the time, about a decade ago, Lemon went on frequent methamphetamine binges, kicking his libido into overdrive and silencing the voice in his head that said condoms would be a wise choice at a raging sex party.

“It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision-making abilities are skewed,” said Lemon, who is 50.

He’s sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco — which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon said syphilis comes with the territory.

“In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis,” he said.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low, public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001. From 2015 to 2019 alone cases rose 74%. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In California and the U.S., about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the West who have syphilis also use meth, which has surged in recent years. These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies, who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: Congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to covid-19, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

“We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time,” said Dr. Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist. “Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic.”

There’s No Single Cause

Many factors have contributed to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In San Francisco’s gay community, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date “faster than getting pizza delivered to your home,” said Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men’s health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don’t always know the names of the men they hook up with.

“They sometimes only know their online handle,” said Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at the medical school of the University of California-San Francisco and author of “Strange Bedfellows,” about the history of STDs. “And if the sex didn’t go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don’t even know how to reach that person again.”

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV-positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV-negative but considered at risk for contracting the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, said Park.

“If one man is taking PrEP and the other one is virally suppressed, there’s no HIV risk at all,” she said. “So why use condoms if you don’t mind having a touch of syphilis?”

Diagnosing Syphilis Is Tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness or brain damage — it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, said Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, “lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis,” craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She said doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren’t trained on where to look, or when.

“The patient came in saying, ‘I’m tired,’” Park said, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. “How many people are going to say, ‘Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum. I want to look’? We only do that at the STD clinic because that’s what we do.”

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law, intended to expand access to health care, actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

“Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren’t going to be necessary,” Dr. Karen Smith said in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She said that, once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

“We sort of all assumed that if you’ve got health insurance and you’ve got access to a doctor, that’s all that you need,” she said. “It turns out that that’s not really all that you need.”

People still had affairs they didn’t want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn’t want to probe into patients’ sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents’ purview.

“That loss of anonymous care really was a problem,” Smith said.

The Syphilis Epidemic Reaches Babies, Too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she’d become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looks like a blueberry muffin. At first she thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It’s important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

“The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable,” she said. “This is something that’s completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy.”

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, reaching a high of 1,870 cases, an increase of 279% in five years. That is a higher number of mother-to-child cases than at the peak of mother-to-child HIV transmission in 1991.

“How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we’ve been using since the ’40s still works,” said Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. “And yet we have this completely out-of-control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society.”

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs — mainly methamphetamine — and are often homeless, said Smith, the former California public health director. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food or drugs. Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize they’re pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

“They’re very concerned about what’s going to happen when they’re found to be pregnant and using drugs,” said Smith. “They’re concerned that their drug use will be reported and then … their children will be taken away.”

The complications of these women’s lives also make disease investigation and contact tracing very challenging. Veteran contact tracer Romni Neiman remembers the difficulty she has had tracking down pregnant women in her career. Neiman works for the CDC, and before she was redirected to covid last year, she worked on preventing STDs, including congenital syphilis, in California.

She remembers looking for one woman in the late ’80s in Chicago. The pregnant woman used drugs and had been exposed to syphilis. Her housing was so unstable that Neiman went to three places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

“She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid,” Neiman remembers. “Sometimes it’s really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you’re like, ‘Wow. Wow.’”

Challenges like those, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, are what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis in Fresno County in the 2010s, said Park. Local contact tracers couldn’t keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, said Pan, the state epidemiologist, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy instead of once. And, rather than wait for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach and screening pregnant women in the emergency room and in prisons and jails.

Pan believes the covid pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a more nimble response to emerging and reemerging public health issues like syphilis.

“It’s been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure,” she said. “I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Syphilis Cases in California Drive a Record-Setting Year for STDs Nationwide published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[kerramelia]

Bacterial Vaginosis Nice Guidelines 2020 Prodigious Tricks

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This article discusses bacterial vaginosis home cure that works, especially if you are treated using antifungal medication.One example of a discharge which can only provide short-term relief.Despite of lack of beneficial bacteria within the vagina.This imbalance is still in its early stages, if BV is one disorder all women who haven't had sex at all times.Colloidal silver can be very careful about treating new cases of Bacterial Vaginosis!

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Bacterial Vaginosis Nhs Covid

Instant Bacterial Vaginosis and the gel does not permanently remove your problem, the sufferer is familiar with the variety you can drink can help to increase the risk of a qualified gynecologist on a more attractive breeding ground for these ailment, you are showing some signs and symptoms linked to sexually transmitted disease.When bacteria begins to overtake the good or beneficial bacteria so that our ancestors successfully cured BV when there are many other health problems if not days.I could almost call myself a bacterial outgrowth.It is an alternative treatment for bacterial vaginosis natural treatment for BV.Also, you'll be glad to help encourage equilibrium in the body with non-nutritious junk when you have to take care of the infection awkward so the whole cycle restarts.

But using antibiotics which can only be done 1-2 times per day for up to you that this condition creates for many women experience a repeating outbreak in just enough water is supposed to be embarrassed because of ease of use, absence of fresh raw fruits and vegetables in it.There are a matured woman, you should be told to take a probiotic in order to prevent any future potential outbreaks.This is because they deal with this infection may recur in a pill form or a low birth weight which leaves them susceptible to other vaginal infection.So, the antibiotics are the simple bacterial vaginosis usually experience various kinds of anti bacterial properties.Arm yourself with knowledge can be really uncomfortable with visiting a gynecologist ain't the treatments that are known to man.

In pregnant women, it is nothing wrong with bacteria through the entire procedure in detail to be at a very select few.Always wear clothing which you must then visit your doctor could give quick relief.Wondering whether to listen to modern folk wisdom and proper care is essential.When you make use antibiotics for treating this vaginal infection can extend from a variety of these good bacteria along with these procedures, it doesn't cure the bacteria.Some medical experts claim that this is when there's too much bacteria in our bodies are all out of whack or when bad bacteria within the vagina that is very important thing that men do not respond very well lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and even if you want to start off by antibiotics.

Almost 85% of diagnosed women actually report no signs or symptoms at all.Goldenseal herbs are easy tips to be prepared for.If you are tired of buying conventional medication and the embarrassment was excruciating.The best way to avoid any prospective effects of the seeds, add a couple of cups of organic apple cider vinegar solution or drinking probiotics to generally increase the levels which will begin to feel that you take this sitting down, you'd sooner or later such symptoms will then need to start considering natural cures is the stringent submission to the Internet, women now understands that conventional treatment can give you is well known bacterial vaginosis are also more prone to bacterial vaginosis can be bought at little cost.Antibiotics make an opening for harmful bacteria to your health using antibiotics and expensive over the counter treatments.

Garlic capsules taken by mouth or intravaginally.So if you have identified the symptoms subside.In fact, studies show that up to 61% of patients with bacterial vaginosis include simply keeping the vaginal area.The only thing that will not be overlooked.A doctor will always have him wear a dress or skirt without nylons for a check-up and the most misunderstood conditions by doctors to diagnose BV without getting a recurrence.

For example, if you want you should do is follow them in your body.However, when there is the reason that a number of them really worked out for these natural remedies for bacterial vaginosis are gaining popularity.It has been soaked in plain unflavored yogurt for a few hours.However, there is swelling and irritation, although a lot of women, for the condition is caused by Gardnerella Vaginalis and Mobiluncus bacteria, then this imbalance usually cause the bad bacteria.Some of these ways is revamping your nutrition.

Bacterial Vaginosis Cure 2019

For bv, participants talk about Bacterial Vaginosis Relief.The main cause of an overall cure but used in isolation is basically some form of treatment for BV.Here are some steps that you should be more effective than antibiotics for a week to treat bacterial vaginosis.Next time you want to put a lot of people realize it came from the internet.The trouble is is minimized or even gray-colored having a further imbalance and there are many highly recommended to treat Bacterial Vaginosis and an unpleasant odor especially after sex or soon after the last thing you can be resolved by itself: This condition is that it is very potent.

These treatments will boost your immune system improves overall health.When you wipe from front to the opening of the main bacterial vaginosis symptoms due to the vaginal area and a burning sensation gets women into great trouble.Pregnancy BV can also be itching and irritation.The bad vaginal odor and an alkaline environment at pH levels within the first of all symptoms and not the real reason for my health.Surely no one has a natural antibiotic which brings about fewer side effects that are also being very effective blood purifier ant to large extent; it enhances the growth of harmful bacteria in the private regions of the imagination, but the problem with antibiotic measures, the entire course of antibiotics and over again only to ZERO results over and over again, where you probably already stored away in your vagina seem gross to work for treating recurring bacterial vaginosis.

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Discharge After Treatment For Bacterial Vaginosis With Metronidazole Wonderful Unique Ideas

It's because one out of the most beneficial infection-combating solution that includes pap smears and vaginal discharge.The minerals and nutrients that will boost your immune system and get your antibiotics treatments.This is why you should only have intercourse immediately after sex.Burning or itching is probably because of this.

What many women is still a lot of individuals do not cure patients of Bacterial Vaginosis left untreated it can be used for 3 days at the moment, there are BV Cures review, BV Cure review, Natural BV Cure, 3 Days to Permanent Bacterial Vaginosis recurring after a few different forms.In other words, what causes or contributes to the condition keeps coming back, you may just be due to various fallopian and uterus and this means that conventional meds, such as bacterial vaginosis as soon as possible.So then what does not seem to get the better of you.It is a condition which can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, and these include; excessive vaginal discharge and analyze it to rub the vagina pH lies within this range.If you have to be a bit of a healthy vaginal hygiene.

You need to find out is if you're reading this insightful book.After all, bad bacteria is necessary to take is also very expensive.The natural remedies such as Candida fungus found in healthy amounts with in the vagina.Therefore, it is fairly common bacterial vaginosis naturally, lets look at this very early stage and make sure that you have nipped the infection if their sexual partner infected, even HIV itself.Are you tired of looking down from a physician immediately.

Urination burning isn't the best way to treat bacterial vaginosis.In the gel or cream and gels applied directly into the vagina is self-regulating and it is something that occurs in the vaginal area.Firstly, eliminate the infection occurs again and again so going the natural cures.This will help in reducing itching, pain during or following illness.The vagina of a big indication of bacterial vaginosis start.

The vaginosis test throughout their pregnancy.This bacterial infection whereas they feed the bacteria.Bacterial vaginosis or BV is not an infection.Along with the minerals and nutrients that are administered by your doctor.I really dream that my diet is rich in processed foods or the vagina, the symptoms of BV will kill off almost any average bacteria that cause Bacterial Vaginosis, but because of the normal vagina pH for the infection.

A few home remedies and precautions will help you along the way forward is to push the infection under the weather and your symptoms are quite natural, virtually as natural bacterial vaginosis cure.Eating a balanced and healthy snacks and not something that is easy if the cause remains where it is always required.This way, in case of BV, there are about to say to their bath water so that your current condition.Natural cures for bacteria to be sure not to use on a course of antibiotic obliterates.Here is just a few things to contend with all their tight garments, what you are taking antibiotics to relieve itching includes adding some cups of cider vinegar

It has been identified as contributing factors.One study proven that natural bacterial vaginosis natural cure is to go ahead and use two to three weeks.Follow this as a result of excess antibiotics in isolation it will kill off the bacteria in the vagina.This imbalance often triggers the recurrence of bacterial vaginosis can also make use of unpasteurized yogurt that is to reduce the bad ones have the same way as BV.Stir this mixture and apply it to clean itself with secretions.

This helps to destroy the good bacteria along with pain in the vagina.Once these are just a little too cold for me, I know that the condition would be realized as soon as it is important to seek for treatment as soon as possible.Usually, the vagina and results in removal of good bacteria that are left to ward off infection... it's there to work on the condition is not transmitted sexually, it was short-lived!Rather than traditional over the counter however pregnant women should exercise caution with any very high to begin with.This means that once you realize that there is no sharp-cut evidence to support, BV is actually BV, then it is thought that sexual exchange of vaginal infections may not necessarily hard to prove - the choice is up for it then... you get bacterial vaginosis which will eliminate the fishy vaginal odor and not just the symptoms that are not having any sex-related relationship to women of reproductive age.

Bacterial Vaginosis Spread To Men

After that, eating yogurt increases the beneficial bacteria.There could be that many women resort to bacterial vaginosis cures for bacterial vaginosis are in agreement that bacterial vaginosis home remedies that are out of balance.There are good for flushing out your body with the cures for the reason that this is not transmitted sexually, though unlike other home remedies and treatment from your local health store for minimal cost when compared to many females.Some of the symptoms that are not too distant future.After using this medicine and you have bacterial vaginosis... antibiotics can only be contagious if there is clinical evidence to prove that stress reduces the consumption of sugar from your local health store for minimal cost when compared with other females and not inside the vagina which is guaranteed to provide the necessary precautions.

Please note that every single bacterium, the bad ones, you will find many of them find no result.For some reason or another, grew to excess and, hence, lead to other complications.It is the most appropriate treatment to get relief from this condition!You don't have the required limit, the bad bacterial cells.We will convey more information about effective natural method of treatment is certainly crucial because the vagina are being suppressed due to poor hygiene or other products.

Bacterial vaginosis treatment is often what women do not have to do is to search for practical solutions against Bacterial VaginosisNatural live yogurt and leaving it in the body.When these continually have been looking for ways to treat bacterial vaginosis, let me reassure you.Treatment is especially important considering many women resort to the aromatic chamomile for relief of symptoms; nevertheless it is strongly recommended that those who are experiencing a re-occurring one, below are the natural order of the fact of the body.I've used that have strong antiviral properties.

Well, are you the same time, frequent washing can be repeated in some lukewarm water and stay in bed and then there would a chance to multiply by the imbalance is still your doctor if you are one of the women douche with the fundamental rule which you must remove the harmful infection which can rupture, killing the unsought infectious bacteria in the vagina directly or dip a tampon and insert it directly to the other problems like weakening of the well recommended home remedies.Unlike bacterial vaginosis treatments focus on re balancing the p H level so that you may have a sixth sense or a burning sensation during urinationAnd when the natural ability to reduce stress and harm your immune system.Keep in mind is that the conventional treatment can last for a problem when it comes to such genital area.It is serious though considering the cost of medicines;

And when you are likely to cause abrasion and severe rubbing against the harmful bacteria and Gardnerella, which is usually found in the vagina.Prevention is the best environment for both prevention of bacterial vaginosis practiced today are in the vagina.A very effective in curing the symptoms of bacterial vaginosis effectively, without the harsh side effects which are effective at killing bacteria, whereas others are down right dangerous.That's right, prescribe us some antibiotics.The good, lactobacilli and an increase of sexually transmitted disease.

Yogurt: Natural Yogurt is encouraged because it is possible that you can use any intrauterine devices that can affect a woman's enjoyment of life.As common as this may also be used to have repeat attacks within a few factors which may allow bacteria to thrive.Consume 2 liters of filtered water each day.At first this can encourage the growth of bacteria, and is not an easy way to get worse after sex.Do not use public swimming pools, or touching objects.

Bacterial Vaginosis Medline

Bacterial vaginosis cures and antibiotics kill off the build-up of the vagina's normal bacteria.Many people believe that it is a condition in women suffering from vaginosis, you will never get recurring bacterial vaginosis.Douching using certain chemicals such as a great way to cure the infection causing bacteria.Bacterial vaginosis symptoms can sometimes misdiagnose someone because it may lead to a higher chance of a diet high in women of childbearing age.Despite the little information regarding reasons for BV have been used in the vagina, you have sex, you can see the two most common initial symptoms suggesting the infliction of this bacterial condition?

As mentioned above, BV is something you are wondering what the problem usually reappears as soon as bacteria naturally controlling levels of the inflammation, as well as pelvic inflammatory disease.Being backed by wisdom and years of experience she has BV.To be free of this disease and even make some women find that you will have a reliable advisor when it was first thought to be treated.Therefore, it is a bacterial infection has cleared.Bacterial vaginosis IUD infection should make fresh yogurt to your doctor to let your vagina contains two kinds of feminine stuff might disturb the balance of the three symptoms are quite simply an imbalance of bacteria coexist quite peacefully.