Recommended Reading #39: Health and Body, Pt. II
"A Response to the War on Women" by Emma Tarver (Reproductive Freedom, Female-Bodied Health, Politics) 3/8/11
I appreciate wholeheartedly almost all I interpret this article as saying. I will only point out that the emphasis on providing health care services for free introduces economic and/or labor issues that I am not necessarily interested in including or discussing at length in the context of all else that is said in the article. The ideological and cultural assessments I interpret from this article about women's bodies and bodily autonomy are what strongly resonate with me in this piece—especially the parts about giving birth, as considerations on that subject or around that process have often seemed to me overlooked or unquestioned in society, the American medical community/modality, and even at times the reproductive freedom movement.
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"Loving the Disabled" by Douglas Fox (Sex Work, Health and Body, Sex and Culture) 8/19/10
I found this discourse striking in its incisive articulations of ways society may view, particularly as imbued with condescension and judgment, the sexuality or sexual experiences of people with disabilities, as well as considerations of said individuals' own respective experiences in relation to sexuality. I found especially salient and poignant the author's assertion about professional sexual services and disabled persons' potential desire and prerogative to use them.
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"Just Breathe: Body Has A Built-In Stress Reliever" by Gretchen Cuda (Non-sex-related, Health and Body) 12/6/10
Since one of my spiritual teachers is a breathwork trainer and practitioner, I have been exposed to experience, information, and invitation about conscious breathing for several years. It is a delight to me to see evidenced in this article a wider understanding of the extraordinary power of breath and how our conscious attention to it may affect and enhance our health and well-being.
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