Body extensions

Writings, links, quotes and musings on my PhD research. www.doisedois.net Questions? luiza.prado AT udk-berlin.de

[jalwhite]

A woman-of-color who writes poetry or paints or dances or makes movies knows there is no escape from race or gender when she is writing or painting. She can’t take off her color and sex and leave them at the door or her study or studio. Nor can she leave behind her history. Art is about identity, among other things, and her creativity is political.

Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras – Creative and Cultural Perspectives by Women of Color  (via evilscum)

!!!!!

(via ayqaart)

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

Prof Guillebaud said: "Older women have had 'forgettable' contraception - as opposed to the pill or condoms - for a long time, with things like sterilisation and the coil."But it is younger women who are more in need of forgettable contraception because they are more forgetful and less likely to get their act in order."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/270374.stm

[body-extensions]

Zanoni reports that largely immigrant neighborhoods in upper Manhattan have widespread use and knowledge of "hierba de ruda," also known as ruta graveolens, or common rue. There is another, entirely separate herbal medication that is being frequently sold called Humphries No. 11, which is supposed to relieve "symptoms of delayed menses", i.e. bring on your period if it's late. The formal excuse for this is that a late period is painful; the likely reality is that this is simply another form of herbal menstrual extraction. I looked around at the herbs in Humphries No. 11, and the biggie seems to be wind flower, also known as pulsatilla, which has some history of being used to bring on childbirth or abortions. It also used black cohosh, which can soften the cervix. (If Humphries is in fact homeopathic, it cannot work at all, since there will be undetectably low amounts of the herbs in it. Some drugs labeled "homeopathic," however, are undiluted herbs.) Both herbal remedies are marketed and seem to be treated mainly in the same way that mechanical menstrual extraction is around the world, which is to say not to terminate known pregnancies but to simply get your period from the inside of your body out.

The most typical form of menstrual extraction, which is a practice that is common in parts of the world where access to contraception and abortion is difficult to get, involves a simple device made with easy-to-find supplies. Right around when a woman's period is supposed to start, you use this device to extract the built-up lining in her uterus. From what I understand, the ostensible reason for this is hygienic, to prevent the woman from getting a period at all. What it actually does, with creative elegance, is elide bans on abortion by terminating any possible pregnancy before it's detectable. The National Abortion Federation describes it thusly: "In the developing world menstrual regulation persists as a crucial strategy to circumvent anti-abortion laws," and it works because "it presumably takes place without a technical verification of pregnancy." Anti-choice organizationos have discovered the widespread practice of women using this technique to avoid menstruating that might just happen to remove unwanted but unverified pregnancies, and surprise! They don't like it. Human Life International complains that menstrual extraction "lets abortionists circumvent legal clauses," because menstrual extraction isn't necessarily terminating a pregnancy. It could just be pulling out a uterine lining that was going to come out on its own anyway. That you can't tell the difference should give those who want to call a zygote a "baby" some pause, and it probably would if they sincerely worried about "life" instead of controlling women's bodies. These herbs are clearly using this gray area to achieve similar results, and though they're probably effective in undiluted amounts, it's far from foolproof and I would recommend that anyone looking for pills to control fertility look to those that are FDA-regulated.

[body-extensions]

BaContraception, short for Bacterial Contraception. Human Vagina contain 108-109 bacteria per gram vaginal fluid. More than 90% of these bacteria is Lactobacillussp. which is commensal in human vagina. Imagine if we engineer the Bacteria to be able to express spermicidal protein. The bacteria would be able to express spermicidal protein on demand and stop expressing the protein on demand too.

http://2015.igem.org/Team:UI_Indonesia/project

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

Such tests would provide parents with unprecedented kinds of information, like risk genes for autism, in addition to hundreds of rare developmental disorders. While that could catch problems in time for an abortion, or to prepare for a disabled child, doctors groups say there’s still too little data backing the use of the tests. In just-released guidelines, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists concluded that “routine” screening for smaller chromosome defects “should not be performed.”  “Bigger is sold as better. The companies are driving this, not patients and not providers,” says Katie Stoll, a genetic counselor in Washington state and a member of the nonprofit Genetic Support Foundation. Companies aren’t bound by the professional guidelines in deciding what test to sell.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540911/debate-ensues-as-prenatal-tests-reach-beyond-down-syndrome/

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

Like all cultural works, SF is situated in a political and economic context. In ours, people are noticing that whatever carrot of prosperity capitalism seems to offer, the stick is all they ever get. SF’s heightened focus on inequality is a sign that the ideological basis of our current social order may be undergoing a significant shift.

[body-extensions]

[...] because of its package/drug-delivery system, Norplant could be used to enforce compliance coercively. In the USA, the desire to implement such uses accompanied Norplant from the day it was approved, December 10, 1990. Newspaper columnist Ellen Goodman reported that, the first day Norplant was announced, a caller to a radio talk-show proclaimed that every girl should have Norplant stuck in her arm at puberty. The next day, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial urging readers to "think about" Norplant as a tool in the fight against black poverty. A California judge ordered a woman, who was guilty of child abuse, to have Norplant inserted as part of a plea bargain. Legislatures in 11 states proposed bills (although they passed none of them) to offer financial incentives to women receiving welfare, to encourage them to use Norplant. Federal Medicaid paid for the insertion of the implants, but states control Medicaid distribution, and in South Dakota, for example, Medicaid would not pay for the removal of Norplant in the absence of a medical reason for doing so. Such incidents, in the USA and in other countries, have raised alarms about the potential for misuse of Norplant. For the purposes of this paper, the example is provided in order to emphasise that it was not the hormone in Norplant, but rather its form of packaging, that made this contraceptive so easily subject to coercive use.

Gossel, P. P. “Packaging the Pill”

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

[body-extensions]

How might toys empower girls to be scientists and engineers, or give boys permission to be sensitive and express their feelings? There’s great potential for queer designers and makers to offer new ways of navigating and thinking about the world… if only there were any. In my experience and research, very few makers are gay or queer, and if they are, they don’t see the queer perspective as being relevant to their design practice. In my time at both Stanford and a for-profit workshop in Pittsburgh, I’ve been one of the only openly gay men among the hundred-plus makers working alongside me.

https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/making-queer

[body-extensions]