Between The Bills: For Bodies Out Of Control PULP magazine

A Q&A with activist, serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of porn site ManyVids, Bella French.

ManyVids was created as a marketplace designed to help positively change the landscape of adult entertainment by empowering sex workers to become successful, independent entrepreneurs.

"We emotionally anthropomorphize the disease, we take it personally. We're suddenly at war and the body count rises."

Get ready to dive into the psychological impact of quarantine, who will be most affected by the economic fallout, and the perception of bodies as vessels for disease rather than as fellow humans.

Since the initial HIV outbreak in the 1980s, the U.S. government has denied acknowledgement, funding, treatment, and prevention of the disease and wrote laws about what HIV-positive folks can and cannot do, specifically due to its association with the LGBTQ+ population.

Worldwide, UNAIDS estimates that people in prison are on average five times more likely to be living with HIV compared with adults who are not incarcerated.

The South only has 37% of the country's population, but Southern states contribute half of HIV-positive Americans.

We'll talk about the public health ramifications of criminalizing HIV/AIDS, racial disparities when it comes to diagnosis and treatment, and ways you can support efforts to control the epidemic in the Southeastern United States.

"Men go to the bathroom and there's toilet paper, paper towels, soap, water - everything they need's in the bathroom. Why haven't we long ago questioned why everything *we* need isn't in the bathroom?"
 -— Claire Cox, Georgia STOMP

"Period poverty" refers to a lack of access to menstruation management products and safe, hygienic spaces in which to use them, exacerbated by social and cultural stigma surrounding menstruation.

Menstrual equity, then, is the process of restoring those rights.

To put things in perspective...
Items states have decided to make tax-exempt instead of period products:
Texas: cowboy boots
Illinois: barbecue sunflower seeds
Wisconsin: gun club memberships
Louisiana: Mardi Gras beads
Georgia: candy and soda
The U.S.: Super Bowl tickets

"The Southern way of treating it is like a disease, like sex is something that once you catch it, you know, you're just going to be carrying it around."

Sex-ed reformers are calling to ditch the archaic purity-culture-fueled, abstinence-only sex ed with comprehensive sex ed in its stead: a curriculum that includes lessons on healthy relationships, abortion, contraceptives, communication, pleasure, queer sex, and everything else you may need to know if you're a sexual being with a body.

The data show that this more realistic approach works where it's been implemented.

In 2013, a study based on the National Survey of Family Growth found that teens who received comprehensive sexuality education were actually 50% less likely to report a pregnancy than those who received abstinence-only education.

They're also more likely to delay their first sexual encounters and to have fewer sexual partners when they do. 

So why isn't comprehensive sex ed the norm? You can blame traditional attitudes about sex that linger in our collective consciousness today, the influence of religion on public education, and Southern expectations of gender.

Reproductive justice is about more than legal access to abortion. It also means ensuring everyone has the financial and personal ability to freely make choices about their bodies and lives in general.

And that includes support for those living with reproductive health issues like polycystic ovarian syndrome, often called PCOS, a hormonal disorder that can cause pelvic pain, infertility and menstrual irregularities.

This week you'll hear from Dr. Jamie Nodler, a reproductive surgeon based in Houston, Texas; Cryssy Dee, an author and advocate living with PCOS and endometriosis; and PULP magazine writer Katherine Fusco, who penned the wonderful essay, "The Beautiful Monstrousness Of Motherhood: On 'Aliens' And Making Life."