Hey! It's Ashleigh. Look, I'm gonna keep it 1000%, I literally just found out I had to vacate my apartment at the beginning of the week pending a verbal arrangement I set up with my current landlord. Regardless of how I feel about such an inconvenient and costly situation, it puts me in a position...
If you’ve ever reblogged a photoset or any one of the text gems from this literal goddess - please send her some financial love cause shit is NOT okay in her world. She’s currently living in a storage unit and needs funds for the day to day shit not to mention help to set herself up because she’s currently enrolled in college and the semester starts in 2 weeks. If you can’t send anything send the blessing of a reblog or a signal boost on your other platforms cause she’s really amazing and needs community more than ever.
Hey , preston is a 5 year old boy who has autism and needs to have a lobe replaced in one of his lungs. preston has been on many steroids and takes breathing treatments few times a day but with him wanting to be more active and being a 5 year old boy his lungs are giving out and not taking to any...
News from the front lines of Uganda's fight against Aids among some of the nation's most stigmatized and most at-risk groups: Signs of a change of heart by Ugandan government officials. Continued ...
News from the front lines of Uganda’s fight against Aids among some of the nation’s most stigmatized and most at-risk groups:
Signs of a change of heart by Ugandan government officials.
Continued vocal opposition to LGBTI people and sex workers from conservative religious leaders, but some willingness to talk about how to stop excluding those groups from health services.
Sex workers’ clients who insist on unsafe-sex practices that spread sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV.
Those were some of the topics discussed last month with representatives of Uganda’s key affected populations (KAPs) who journeyed close to the nation’s rural western border, seeking to improve the odds of defeating Aids, malaria and tuberculosis there.
Those KAPs representatives were elected early this year to the Uganda Country Coordinating Mechanism (UCCM), which oversees health policies and programs in Uganda on behalf of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. They are:
Kikonyogo Kivumbi, the substantive representative on the UCCM, who speaks for LGBT people, sex workers, men who have sex with men (MSM) and intravenous drug users.
Jude Ayebare, elected as an alternate to speak for people whose livelihoods make them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, including fishing communities, truckers and uniformed services personnel.
Kivumbi and Ayebare went to Hoima on July 23 to meet with members of those constituencies at the Kijjungu Hill Hotel.
Ayebare told the gathering that the main objective of the meeting was to identify ways to involve KAPs in Global Fund programs and to make the best use of $246 million in grants directed to health centers for products such as drugs, condoms and mosquito nets.
Change of heart
Kivumbi said he has seen “a genuine change of heart” from government officials, who now favor offering health care to all Ugandans, especially KAPs. That’s what made possible his election as an “openly self-identifying queer person,” he said.
Although sexual minorities still face resistance from anti-gay medical personnel, especially those who work for religious organizations, Kivumbi said, “There is hope.”
“Reaching out to KAPs is now part of government policy embedded in the National Strategic Plan for HIV/Aids” with the aim of reducing HIV infections, Kivumbi said.
But stigma and anti-LGBTI rhetoric remain an obstacle, the meeting was told. STIs are a big problem for at-risk populations in and near Hoima, and many at-risk people fear going to health centers due to stigma among health-care providers. One suggestion was to identify KAP-friendly health providers or to establish a new clinic that will provide KAP-friendly service.
Regarding religious leaders’ anti-LGBTI, anti-sex-worker rhetoric, Kivumbi said that he and Ayebare “have established dialogues with religious leaders at national and regional levels to harmonise how best to offer health services to all.”
But “religious rhetoric deters KAPs from health access, especially in areas where religious-based health institutions are the main providers of health services.” Still, he said, “some progress had been made.”
He urged people to stand up for their rights in the face of bullies, especially since “Uganda now has a robust gay and sex workers movement.”
HIV-spreading sex practices
A further issue discussed at the meeting was the problem of traditional sexual practices fueling the spread of HIV.
One issue is clients refusing to allow sex workers to use condoms. “How then do we bring down the 7.3% national HIV prevalence,” Kivumbi asked.
Another issue is clients who insist on being cleaned by the sex worker after sex — even with a shared towel.
“Can’t men who worship their penises really clean themselves after sex?” Kivumbi exclaimed after the meeting. “If one man has syphilis, gonorrhea, kisipi [the name for Kaposi’s sarcoma in Uganda]… candida et al., one sex worker can infect 20 of them in a night” because of this patriarchal sex practice, he said.
Addressing any sex-work clients, Kivumbi said, “Please make it a rule to clean yourself and help us scale down STI and HIV among Key Affected Populations.”
Night visit
Kivumbi also visited sex workers at night on the streets, where he saw further evidence of the health problems they face.
“I was very touched and disturbed last night to see the poor hygiene, environment, discrimination, physical and verbal insults hurled at sex workers in Hoima town,” he said after that tour.
Religious ostracism remains a difficult obstacle.
“Many of our people report not being able to access STI management, condoms, lubricants for fear of reprisal and insults from health workers,” Kivumbi said.
He said that police were helpful, however.
“We were able to reach out to our people at night and consult without interference.”
The trailer, claims to be a ‘true story’, and tells the audience that a young, white, cisgender, gay man was the first to throw a brick and start the Stonewall Riots. In reality, hundreds of eye witness accounts and documented evidence have said the riots were started by black drag queens and transgender women.
Honestly this film is a slap in the face to the people who took part in the riots, who fought in the streets for your right to be treated like a human being. It’s an insult to the LGBT community, to trans people, to drag queens, to women and people of color. Hollywood has once again taken our moment of major historical significance and told us that the only way people will care is if a white man is the hero, and that the only way change really happens is if a white man fights for it.
This is just sad to witness: Brotha responds to Poem “To Be Black and Woman Alive”
Kudos to you loyal sistas for remaining loyal, but I just can’t sit and be quiet for the sake of solidarity. I don’t understand why black men can not empathize with black women like we do them. These women were clearly explaining to black men, how much it hurts them to be persecuted by the men in their own community simply for being black and female.
They want us to understand them when they speak out, but as soon as we need their compassion they replace it with anger and rage, being more concerned about protecting their male privilege and image.
And his minions called the women misguided because how dare they question their abuse and mistreatment of black women, denying them the freedom to delightfully reap the benefits of misogynoir.
From the slander on social media by the likes of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, to books like blame it on Rio, to having to hear this stuff from my own brother, I’m just so tired of it all, when will it end?
Here’s what he had the nerve to say about these intelligent young sistas in the video (WARNING, extreme misogynoir, insensitive content and hate)
“A Grown Black Man Response to Crystal Valentine & Aaliyah Jihad – “To Be Black and Woman and Alive”
I see why ugly sistas love salt and vinegar flavored potato chips because that’s all their ugly behind got to offer this world, some salty hate and vitreous vinaigrette. This video came across my social media wire and I quickly severed the social media connection to that chick immediately for even passing along this cray cray crap. In this article, let’s review this video or poem or whatever this crap is and give an honest assessment from a black man and how we black men should respond.
The first order of business is to check out the video
The very first words that come out of their mouth was mocking us brothas with some “I’m just saying..if she ain’t got no booty, I ain’t trying to hit it..” and I’m sitting here thinking that maybe I should be trying to hit it even if she ain’t got no booty. So you see where this is all going..some of the dumbest most illogical cray cray shit coming out of these ugly ass sistas mouth. Yeah, I said they are ugly because they are ugly and they look and act like the shit stains on my drawas. I’m just saying, none of them got a booty and I’m damn sure not interested in hitting it either. If I was a young black male student and walked by them, I would clutch my textbooks and be like “ugghh!” and walk on by practicing in my head how to say “ni hao” to the chicks I’m trying to holla at – that’s just being honest and truthful and that’s what we going to be in this article.
ni hao…ni hao…ni hao!
The one thing you learn when you grow up around adversity and negativity is never become ugly like the environment around you – rise above it to be the shining star you are meant to be. Never become a victim or a reactionary to the negative environment you are surround in. If you do become bitter to the negativity, then you become a byproduct of the negative stuff and you will never be the beautiful and shining person you could have been. Because all you will end up being is ugly and that’s what these sistas in this video are, just ugly.
These negative ugly sistas reminded me of Jason Black and Dr. Umar Johnson who are also some ugly ass brothas who doing the same thing as these chicks – blaming other people and whining and acting angry on a stage platform with people in the audience agreeing with that negative platform they are on. We black people have choices in our life when we grow up around adversity where we can choose to become a victim or choose to rise above the negative and be greater.
You ever noticed I say I’m from the West Side of Chicago but you never hear me talk about I was drug dealing or gang-banging and shit like that? You hear these other cats be trying to brag to you about they grew up hard and did dirt and stuff like trying to brag on the negative environment to get some cool points or whatever. No, what you see me doing is handling serious business, showing brothas and sistas in the hood how to do for self, talk to you guys how to code this and create a solution on this and adopt global practices and patterns and I talk directly to brothas and sistas. And people in the Global Urban Collective know I’m putting in extra work to help build collaborative progress for brothas and sistas to make moves. I didn’t allow myself to become a victim – I rose above the negative people and environment and become the person who will give a damn about the West Side of Chicago and any hood out there and work to empower my people, my community and our younger generation to have it better than me coming up.
These two ugly ass broads chosen to express themselves as negative whiny victims – I don’t give a fuck about their ugly ass or their stupid ass poem and they can go suicide themselves like the rest of those dark-skinned red lip stick wearing sistas because they chose to be a victim and not a conqueror of the negative environment that we all are dealing with. You ain’t going to win a damn thing in life being an ugly victim but you will win immediately when you decide you not going to allow this negative environment make you a negative victim and choose instead to dedicate your life to rising above your situation.
We black men are going to do what the fuck we want to do and if we brothas don’t like flat booty dark skinned broads, then we don’t fucking like flat booty dark skinned broads. A bunch of ugly ass broads citing some cray cray poetic bullshit ain’t going to change the way we brothas think either. I really don’t like dating black chicks in 2015 either after all the bullshit I dealt with the sistas. What you sistas don’t get and what you missing the whole point is the reason why we brothas stop dating your flat booty dark skinned ass in the first place.
You sistas were negative and full of shit – we brothas decided we are not going to become victims of a negative environment where sistas using cops to attack black men, using the court system to keep a black man away from his children, fucking knuckleheads instead of marrying black men, conspire with liberals to abort our unborn black children and undermine First Lady Michelle Obama watching a show call Scandal and then watch reality TV of sistas fighting each other. No, we brothas made the decision to rise above the negative environment you sistas brought forth and find something better – I found a lot of Arab sistas, Indian sistas, Chinese sistas and Catholic Latina sistas who have core values and show outward respect for the black man that respect himself and made something out of himself and so has a lot of other brothas.
Stop being an ugly ass sista and rise the fuck up from the negative environment you keeping yourself in. “
I’m not posting a full link, because he doesn’t need anymore clicks for that mess. So I’ll just let you all figure it out by saying it’s called dream and hustle minus the spaces dot com, yall can figure that out.
I don’t respect him at all. Basically, black women should shut up, accept how things are, and take it in stride, for black men’s benefit. It’s call “Choosing to be a victim” when we speak out. But they can complain, whine, rant and go off anytime they feel mistreated, discriminated against or attacked any time they pleas and expect us to stand beside them with our fists in the air shouting black power.
When you start off an argument attacking the person instead of their response you’ve already lost. Every time yall self hating negros open your mouths it further conveys what we are talking about. As long as yall continue to ignore and deny our point of view as Black Women everything you do and stand for will fail. Your foundation will continue to crumble without us and our support. I’m here for uplifting the Black community but I refuse to do so while being attacked by my own brethren.
Okay, so I guess being dismissive of our own plight and our own struggle is the way to fix the issue. See this is the problem, how the fuck are we supposed to fix any issue if we're going to act like there isn't one? How are we going to know the extent to which it affects us if we don't talk about it? It's assimilation man, let a 'power structure' strip you of everything, suck your entire culture dry, and then just shut the fuck up about because you'll come off as 'negative' or 'whiny', get the fuck out of here. Oh and those women are fucking gorgeous.
