themothership

[validblogname]

i mean...

[mommahoney]

Hillary

[fictiongarden]

[salvatoregm]

Truly, a Man Worthy of Admiration.

[guillegdep]

[pissingonmonarchy]

Trump ENDANGERED Journalists and Staff as he FLED in FEAR of Iran

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

I still think pregnancy and childbirth should be degendered. we stopped talking about that and I need us to pick it back up pls

[fagdyke-fckry]

People in the notes arguing that this is about individual comfort and misgendering are missing a major piece of the puzzle, which is that programs made for mothers and pregnant women often by definition exclude anyone whose gender marker is not F on every form they’ve ever filled out.

Insurance agencies use M markers to deny coverage for pregnancy related healthcare. Doctors offices hang up on pregnant people trying to schedule pre- and post-natal appointments for themselves because their voices or their names aren’t feminine enough. And if they manage to make the appointment, they can get harassed out of the waiting rooms or face medical malpractice behind closed doors.

Charities and benefits made for pregnant or new mothers don’t accept pregnant/new fathers or non-gendered parents. The WIC fund is called women, infants, and children.

If we degender pregnancy and childbirth (and periods while we’re at it) we open up support for every trans and intersex person who needs it. We normalize pregnant people of other genders and sexes, leaving less room for harassment and malpractice and more accountability for those who decide to be assholes anyway.

It’s not a-fucking-bout comfort. It’s about safety and survival. This can literally be the difference between life and death for some people.

[guillegdep]

She said it best when she said nothing at all.

[klapollo]

i think if your kid is precociously good at an adult hobby like cooking or sewing or whatever and you try to monetize it by turning them into a three-year-old influencer you should be locked in a funhouse until you change your mind

[pissingonmonarchy]

Dementia Don FLEES in FEAR from IRAN THREAT

[pinkrabbitsbythenational]

(for people who don’t know kathleen stock is an infamous British terf who triggered a whole “free speech” university row over her views)

this is what people mean when they say that transphobia and ableism are interlinked. because *of course* the same person who refuses to believe people when they assert their gender also refuses to believe them when they assert a disability. because who knows their bodies better than a random british upper-class white woman!

and at the end of the day it really boils down to this vindictive need to police and bully strangers because 1. why do you care about someone saying they’re a woman, dressing like a woman etc. and 2. why do you care about someone using a walking stick if they don’t 100% need it? the answer is, neither of those things affect your life, and you shouldn’t.

[pissingonmonarchy]

Trump LASHES OUT as the TRUTH is EXPOSED, he is TERRIFIED

[thepersynposts]

[porterdavis]

Quote of the Day

When Trump was being loaded into the catering truck to be secretly moved to a different plane, I can safely guarantee that he never once asked if it was wrong to leave everyone else on the decoy plane with no knowledge of the danger they were being put in.

Matt Jimmy

[pangur-and-grim]

it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.

[ms-demeanor]

I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.

Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)

Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.

[ms-demeanor]

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.

[chazzaroo47]

As someone with corn based issues my sickness levels are a recession indicator.

I can tell when companies are cost cutting because they start using corn sugar or maize starch as a bulking sweetener and it makes me incredibly fucking ill. Are they kind enough to put a "new recipe" label on it? Sometimes! Only fucking sometimes. A bunch of times I discover it when my stomach is trying to exist my body in aggressive, stabby maneuvers. It sucks.

And people will literally laugh at it and pretend it's no problem that they don't know why every yoghurt in the shop has cornflour in it rather than real fruit. Or their meat is all preserved with corn to make it look good for longer.

People have no idea what is in their food unless they have to have.

And even that can end up down weird pipelines of "crunchy mums" and conspiracies about plastic rice. It's so tiring man.

[vaspider]

Oh man, I fucking hate the "unlabeled new recipe" bullshit. I am so grateful that my wife is ever-vigilant and realized that our old go-to brand of molé sauce no longer had the tiny text reading "gluten-free" where she was used to seeing it on the front of the jar, because they'd changed their recipe and put wheat flour in it.

She literally clocked the change in the label — it wasn't marked as changed, she just noticed that the "gf" label was gone — and that was enough for her to flip the jar over and check.

I gotta say that the most infuriating recipe change I've had to deal with was when a company started using "barley syrup" instead of their previous HFCS, which is how I suddenly started sweating and whimpering from drinking frozen lemonade.

"Lemonade is always gluten-free, it's stupid for them to label that shit!"

lmao ok bud

Anyway, solidarity. This shit sucks.

[ms-demeanor]

Wheat is commonly used in adhesives, it would not be at all surprising for an eyepatch to contain wheat depending on how the fabric has adhered to the form.

The distilled water I can see possibly being labeled because of the packaging as a marketing decision.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Freaking yikes.

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

No matter how progressive, compassionate or understanding you think you are, if you routinely dismiss an entire nation of people as bloodthirsty monsters, rejecting the complexity, interiority, and diversity of humanity you allow for yourself and your nation, you’re nothing more than a reactionary bigot, actually.

[yzuposts]

Jesus fucking Christ. In the US they’re separating the MMR vaccine into three different shots?? Let me tell you fucking something: YOU CANNOT GET THESE AS SEPARATE SHOTS IN THE US! It is physically impossible to get these three shots separate.

So I guess kids are just going to get measles, mumps, and rubella now! Even though we have a perfectly good MMR vaccine for all three-in-one! Fuck Trump. Fuck Kennedy. Fuck Bill Cassidy and any of these republican dickheads who aided and abetted this grievous wrong to the future of America & all the children who WILL be affected by this. Goddamn monsters in charge.

[doubly-magic]

wait, are the shots only effective when theyre together? /genuine questions

[daysleftofsecondterm]

No, it’s just that the vaccine is only available together because the diseases have been eradicated for so long, we straight up do not make them separate anymore. Which also means that when people do get these diseases it’s gonna be a lot harder to treat and a lot easier to die.

[kyrianne]

So by my understanding, there isn’t actually a law or regulation to force them into 3 separate shots yet. It’s just Trump’s “strong suggestion” that they need to do that. But that’s still the first stage to get the ball rolling into making that reality.

I expect everyone in the communicable diseases field will do everything necessary to prevent this from going anywhere, but it’s good to stay alert.

[daysleftofsecondterm]

Important context; thank you so so so much