The Uncouth Kids

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While everyone’s reposting Brian David Gilbert’s line about opiate addiction in the U.S., now’s a perfect time to take a moment to learn more about the realities of it! In April of last year, 2018, the Navajo Nation joined a growing list of tribes, cities, and states suing opioid manufacturers and pharmacies.

“Distribution of opioids across the country has been grossly excessive and especially in Indian Country. The CDC death rates show a strong correlation over time with the increase in opioid volumes being distributed and dispensed across the country, and this is particularly true for Native American tribes,” Fields said. (x)

CDC data states that 1 in 10 Native children aged 12 and older have used opioids for non-medical purposes, double the rate of white children. Pregnant Native women are also up to 8.7 times more likely than pregnant white women to be diagnosed with opioid dependency or abuse. The lawsuit also states that that prescription and illicit opioids led to 7,309 overdose deaths from 2014 through 2016. (x)

Melanie Benjamin, chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians also testified that, “More than 28 percent of the babies born addicted to opiates are Native American even though we are only about 2 percent of the population.”

“The only difference between these companies and drug cartels is the fact that legal purveyors of prescription opioids have protection from law enforcement and seemingly unlimited funds to market and distribute to the masses their highly addictive drugs,” Cordalis, who is a Yurok citizen, said after the tribe went to court last month. (x)

Again, Navajo Nation is just one tribe among a parade of places suing big pharma. I encourage you to research and see if your state or a city or tribe near you has joined the lawsuit train against manufacturers and pharmacies and read their stories! Stay aware of the truths of big pharma’s crimes in our country and our communities, and the government’s complicity with them. Thank you for reading!

Anonymous asked:

I’m laughing at the concept of young boys of the past wearing dresses.

sartorialadventure answered:

Why? Lots of men throughout history have worn clothes that we would see today in our ridiculously rigid gender roles as women’s clothes: dresses, skirts, etc. I think it’s pretty crazy that in our culture, women can wear pants OR skirts, but men can ONLY wear pants!

^Guard at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

^Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Athens, Greece

^14th-century military martyr, Byzantine

^ Cardinal Richelieu, 1636

^ Man’s kurta, India

^Ancient Romans of all classes

^Typical Ancient Roman soldier

^Ancient Egyptian men

^Ancient Greek men in chitons

^Aztec men

^Medieval Saxons

^Medieval Normans

^Academic gowns

I could keep going with examples, but I would probably never stop! I think it is safe to say that at LEAST half of all men throughout history have worn skirt-like clothing.

Skirts were the matter-of-fact wear of many of humanity’s most ancient civilizations, on both sides of the gender divide. …Many ancient costumes were based around the idea of the skirt, purely because they were easy to construct and created huge freedom of movement. Whether you were fighting, building, farming or engaging in some kind of religious ritual, skirts provided cheap and efficient use. Short skirts among soldiers from the height of the Roman Empire, noted an exhibition at the Met called “Braveheart: Men In Skirts,” were considered proof of virility, and allowed for swiftness while in combat. Two factors, theorists note, determined the use of pants by either gender: cold and the necessity for horse-riding. (source)

Western culture only really began forbidding men from wearing any skirt-like clothing in the 19th century, and even then (as we can see above) there have been lots of hold-outs, from the Victorian gender-neutral children’s robes that you mentioned to the Scottish kilt.