I need to apologize for the lack of posts the last three days. I have been spending a lot of time with Ron and I have been cooking three meals a day and doing the dishes and laundry which has left little time for posting. Then late last night Ron realized how much he had been taking of my time and so today he wanted to leave me alone. But then I did something I had not done for a month or more, I went to the abuse survivor site. And one post led to the next and eventually to eventally 40 open tabs of fellow abuse survivors discussions of what they went through. When Ron got back at 3:30 he noticed I was very upset. He kept asking why until I told him. Then he was angry. He wanted to go in and close the entire window of open tabs. He joked of taking my computer away from me like a teenager who went to the wrong websites. I had to explain it to him. I can’t talk to anyone about my childhood / young adult abuse. I don’t have anyone to share the memories with other than the blog and I feel horrible when I do that even though it helps me because I can’t help but think I am hurting people I care about like it hurts Ron when I share my memories with him. But on that site, on the male survivor website are people who went through what I did, and they understand, they can hear me, and I can hear them with out it harming us, except that it becomes a loop I struggle to break out of. I want to read every post and give a reply because I was there as they were, I am suffering as they are, and I can understand their pain and anger as they can mine. It is a place to share my memories with people and not feel I am damaging them because they are already hurt. Ron struggled to understand that and I told him. “You did not know my abusers like I did. But by the time you met them I had moved out of their home and they had moved on to their own homes and families. I reminded him my abusive hellspawn sister who threw parties offering me as a party flavor to any teen who wanted me male or female required her own son to sleep in her bedroom from his preteen years until he left the house as an adult”. I know she made me please her, did she do the same to him? I was paralyzed to help him. At the time ron did not know of my abuse but he felt something was wrong. It was well known in the “family” and no one thought it wrong. I suspect my oldest male hellspawn did the same to his two young daughters. I reminded Ron how my adoptive mother kept trying to kiss me on the lips when she was in the park model we owned. He looked stricken and walked away, I think he had not connected the dots of that and how I had to try to avoid that. Anyway I have deleted the window those tabs were in and I am going to reply to a few comments do the few dishes, and then try to do a cartoons / memes / news roundup hopefully for tomorrow. Hugs
Sorry this article is so old. I have dozens more older than this in open tabs with the hope of one day being able to get what I think is important news out to those who may have missed it at the time. Here is the southern states patriarchy punishing women for not bringing forth a well formed offspring of a male who bred them. That is the way this reads to me. The woman means nothing, just the fetus, zygote, the failed issue of a man must be the fault of a woman. Think of this being promoted as prolife while they are willing to torture live females for a few cells in the human body that act parasitic. Remember no man is required to give any part of his body to another even his own dying child. Tht is the law. But a woman, a female is required to give her body over entirely and all actions of her life entirely to that male inserted parasitic entity that will drain her life force and can cause life long medical problems. It tells you exactly how these male law makers and their Christian supports see women. Hugs
Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe
Study finds prosecutors targeting low-income women mainly in US south – and figure likely to be an undercount
Abortion rights supporters protest outside the supreme court in Washington in June last year. Photograph: Aashish Kiphayet/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
In the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, prosecutors in 16 states charged more than 400 people with pregnancy-related crimes, new research released on Tuesday found.
Of the 412 cases tracked by Pregnancy Justice, the vast majority took place in the US south, targeted low-income women and involved allegations that women broke laws against child abuse, endangerment or neglect, according to the research, which was compiled by the reproductive justice group. About 300 prosecutions took place in Alabama and Oklahoma. In 16 cases, law enforcement charged women with homicide.
Because there is no national database of US arrest or court records, the group believes the tally is likely to be an undercount. In a report released in September 2024, Pregnancy Justice said it had recorded 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the first year after Roe fell – the highest number ever recorded at that time. Pregnancy Justice is now devoting more resources to unearthing records of pregnancy-related prosecutions, so the group can’t say for sure whether these prosecutions are on the rise post-Roe or whether they are simply tracking them more closely.
Louisiana issues warrant for California doctor accused of mailing abortion pills
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Nearly 400 of the cases included in the new report involved allegations of substance use during pregnancy. In an example described to the Guardian, after one woman gave birth, the hospital tested her umbilical cords for drugs. When the test came back positive for marijuana, the woman was arrested for felony child neglect, even though she had a medical marijuana card.
The laws used in most of these prosecutions, Pregnancy Justice pointed out, are typically meant to protect children, not fetuses. By prosecuting pregnant women under them, the group says, states are cementing the legal doctrine of “fetal personhood”, which seeks to grant embryos and fetuses full legal rights and protections – sometimes at the cost of the rights of the woman carrying them. Alabama and Oklahoma are both hubs for the growing fetal personhood movement.
“That is the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement,” said Dana Sussman, the senior vice-president at Pregnancy Justice, which scoured court and police records to find the cases. “It wasn’t just to overturn Roe. It is to establish full personhood, full rights for embryos and fetuses.”
Sussman said a number of women have faced criminal consequences for taking substances that were legal or prescribed to them. For that reason, Donald Trump’s claim last week that pregnant women who take Tylenol may give their children autism, raised alarms. Scientific research does not support this claim.
“It’s a perfect storm of all of the things that we work on: stigmatizing pregnant people for not being perfect pregnant people, blaming them for their perceived failures, and relying on misinformation and junk science to create a panic when there shouldn’t be one or isn’t one – while also increasing surveillance in the police state to monitor and potentially criminalize people when they don’t meet these impossible ideals,” Sussman said.
Only 31 of the cases documented by Pregnancy Justice included a stillbirth or miscarriage, while almost 300 of the cases led to a live birth.
A woman whose case was included in the Pregnancy Justice report reportedly didn’t realize she was pregnant until she started to feel intense pain in her stomach. The woman, a new immigrant to the US, suspected that she had food poisoning and decided to drive herself to the hospital.
Before she could get in the car, however, the woman started to give birth. She ultimately delivered what police records listed as a stillbirth. Pregnancy Justice did not factcheck the cases in the report and could not say whether the fetus was past 20 weeks of pregnancy, after which the term stillbirth is used. After police found the remains, the woman was charged with abuse of a corpse.
Abortion pill providers targeted by new Texas law refuse ‘anticipatory obedience’
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The report indicates there are far more cases of miscarriage criminalization than have made national headlines. In one widely covered case in late 2023, police charged an Ohio woman with felony abuse of a corpse after she miscarried into a toilet. In another, earlier this year, a Georgia woman who had been found bleeding and unconscious after a miscarriage faced one count of concealing the death of another person, and one count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body. The charges against both women were ultimately dropped.
Nine cases discovered by Pregnancy Justice involved allegations that women had considered abortions, such as ordering abortion pills or looking for information about abortion online. Only one woman in those cases was charged with violating a criminal abortion ban, likely because it is legal in most states to “self-manage” one’s own abortion. US abortion bans tend to penalize providers and people who help abortion patients, not the patients themselves.
In 2025, lawmakers in at least 12 states – including Alabama and Oklahoma – introduced legislation that would treat fetuses as people, which would leave women who have abortions vulnerable to being charged with homicide. In several of those states, that charge would carry the death penalty.
“What our work has proven is that, unfortunately, anything is possible when it comes to policing pregnancy,” Sussman said.
The point is both cruelty and wiping trans people from public society. The not only don’t understand being trans, don’t feel trans so it must not be real, and being transgender seems to upset their god they feel. Their god created the trans person trans but that doesn’t fit with the world view of these Christians. So if their god is not powerful enough to get rid of trans people then the entire LGBTQ+ they will do it for him. Sound like they created god in their image rather than being in his. Hugs
A trans Kansas resident recently changed her name but not her gender marker on her license, fearing what Kansas may do if she did. The Kansas DMV still flagged her ID.
by Nate Zuke
Andrea Ellis of Wellington, KS was one of many transgender Kansans who opened her mail on February 25 to learn that in less than 24 hours, her driver’s license would be invalid. The letter, issued by the Kansas Department of Revenue, informed her that because House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 (S.B. 244) “requires Kansas-issued driver’s license and identification cards to reflect the credential holder’s sex at birth,” her current license would become “invalid immediately” on February 26.
Ellis had been following the news closely in the past few months. She knew S.B. 244 would be going into effect. But she never expected the state to send her a letter invalidating her license.
That’s because Ellis had never changed the sex marker on her license in the first place.
Ellis last updated her driver’s license on January 7, 2026, after completing a legal name change in December 2025. Fearing her license would be revoked if she updated her sex marker, she deliberately held off on doing so.
“I saw the writing on the wall after listening to [Attorney General] Kobach’s testimony for H.B. 2426,” she said. H.B. 2426, containing the original transphobic legislation sponsored by Republican Kansas Representative Susan Humphries, would later be repurposed as S.B. 244 using the Kansas State Legislature’s “gut and go” trick. This allowed legislators to strip the original contents of S.B. 244, replace it with the contents of H.B. 2426, and pass S.B. 244 without giving the public time to weigh in, dodging accountability for the bill’s contents.
Most bills being passed during this session of the Kansas Legislature won’t go into effect until July 1, 2026. S.B. 244, however, contains a provision that allowed it to go into effect as soon as it was published in the Kansas Register, the state newspaper of record, on February 26. This tactic echoed 2025, when the Kansas Legislature made the same maneuver with Senate Bill 63 to rapidly ban gender-affirming care for minors in Kansas.
On February 25, transgender Kansans like Ellis started receiving letters in the mail informing them that as of February 26, their licenses would be rendered invalid. With no grace period, many recipients of these letters found themselves with less than 24 hours to figure out what to do in a rural state where driving is necessary for most people.
Ellis was confused about the letter she received, but felt as though she had no choice but to comply. She spends nearly an hour and a half each day driving to and from her job in Park City. Thursdays are one of her days off, so she didn’t have to call out of work on the 26th to go to the DMV. Still, having to suddenly get a new driver’s license was extremely inconvenient, as it would be for anyone.
“Wellington doesn’t have a DMV, so when I got the letter in the mail, I had to decide between going to the DMV in Winfield or the DMV in Derby,” said Ellis. Both locations were over thirty minutes away.
When Ellis left her house on Thursday morning, her license was officially invalid. She couldn’t comply with the new law unless she was able to get to a DMV, but in order to get to the DMV, she was forced to break the law. Every minute she was on the road, she was at risk of being arrested, jailed, or fined. Fortunately, she reached her destination without any trouble.
Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee. “It seemed like none of the DMV staff had any idea what was going on. I don’t think there was time for them to have any training on how to handle the SB244 stuff,” Ellis said. After presenting her letter, she was forced to surrender the license she had been issued less than two months ago and watch as the DMV employee cut a large chunk out of it, rendering it officially invalid. Her altered license was returned to her alongside her new temporary paper license. Both credentials designated her sex as “M.”
Paper license in hand, Ellis got in her car and started driving northeast to El Dorado, a town roughly 40 minutes away. “With a background like mine, I have to do something when there’s a crisis going on. I can’t just sit still,” Ellis said, referencing her past military service and reflecting on her deployments to Afghanistan. That morning, Equality El Dorado, the town’s local LGBTQ+ organization, had posted on Facebook asking for volunteers to help drive trans Kansans to the DMV, as well as cash donations to help people cover the unexpected cost of a replacement license. Other organizations, such as the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, also sprung into action to try and help transgender community members.
Ellis was ready to pitch in once she arrived in El Dorado, but she was stopped in her tracks. When she parked her car and checked her phone, she learned the Derby DMV had called her and left a message requesting that she come back to the DMV as soon as she could. Apparently, there was a problem with the new license she had just been issued. She tried to call the DMV back to get more information, but no one answered her calls. Frustrated, she got back in her car, canceled a doctor’s appointment she had scheduled for later that afternoon, and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to spend the majority of her day off at the DMV.
The DMV employee had to call a manager over for assistance, and Ellis waited patiently as the DMV staff tried to solve the issue. “They didn’t tell me what the problem was, but I overheard them saying there was a ‘flag’ tied to my ID in their system that they had to remove,” Ellis explained. Eventually, she was given another temporary paper license. Just like the license that had been cut up that morning, just like the first temporary paper license she had been issued as a replacement, and just like her original Alabama birth certificate, the sex marker printed on her newest paper license identified her as “M.”
By the time Ellis met up with me at Pennant Coffee/Good Company in Wichita, a local queer spot, a coffee shop by day and bar by evening, she’d driven a total of over 131 miles and spent close to three hours on the road. Sitting at Pennant, surrounded by pride flag decorations and chatting with the visibly queer and trans staff, it felt surreal to think that we were in one of the worst states in the U.S. to be transgender. But Ellis’s story proved the extent the state was willing to go to torment its transgender residents.
“I had never even changed my sex marker. All I did was change my name in December, so that’s the only way they could’ve flagged me,” Ellis said.
The fact that Ellis was flagged for her name change alone suggests the state of Kansas is intensely monitoring transgender citizens. In a state where changing one’s legal sex marker has now been rendered impossible, Ellis’s story shows that even just changing one’s name can be enough for a transgender person in Kansas to be identified, targeted, and forced to surrender their legal documents.
On February 27, 2026, the ACLU of Kansas announced it would be filing a lawsuit challenging S.B. 244. However, for the time being, S.B. 244 remains in effect. With the 2026 Kansas gubernatorial election looming large in November, it is extremely concerning to see the way the state is already using its power to not only disenfranchise its citizens, but effectively immobilize them in a state where driving is so essential to daily life.
Nate Zuke (he/him) is originally from Omaha, Nebraska. He has lived in Wichita, Kansas since 2016. His Bluesky handle is @natezuke.bsky.social
Painter William Merritt Chase opened an art school for a new generation of women, teaching them how to draw as well as how to advocate for themselves.
William Merritt Chase with Parsons School of Design studentsvia Wikimedia Commons
The story of the establishment of the Chase School of Art, forerunner of the Parsons School of Design in New York, offers an unlikely object lesson in what happens when you seek to realize your creative aspirations in an era of political and cultural upheaval. In 1896, the Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase was ready to declare independence from the rigid hierarchies of the New York art scene and its dependence on European masters and methods. He dreamed of establishing what he considered an explicitly American school of art, one that encouraged artists to embrace and portray the unique character and energy of the young nation and its people, and he needed money. To get it, he founded an experimental new school for painting in Manhattan that would, ironically, thrive on the burgeoning hopes of women in an era of their growing liberty and opportunity.
Best remembered for society portraits, plein air paintings, pastel seascapes, dead fish still lifes, and depictions of dancing white clouds, Chase suddenly found himself in an unfamiliar role: he was, if not quite an equal rights leader, then an ambitious artist who, in pursuing his own interests, opened avenues for women artists and played a part in establishing a new era of American art beyond his own envisioning.
As June L. Ness writes in Archives of the American Art Journal, Chase stood among the most influential artists and art teachers in the country at the turn of the twentieth century. He was on the faculty at the Art Students League, the Brooklyn Art Association, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; he instructed a cadre of private students in his home studios and abroad; he lectured in Connecticut, Chicago, and elsewhere; and he oversaw a summer art school outside the Long Island town of Southampton.
A man of his times, Chase and his wife, Alice Gerson, an amateur photographer, ran at the limits of their finances. In 1896, as parents to four children, they faced a turning point. Chase wanted to quit teaching altogether and devote himself to painting. Yet the couple also wanted to maintain luxury residences in both the city and the country while traveling extensively but lacked the resources to sustain such a lifestyle. (snip-MORE, plus art!)
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Cadged these snippets from my Naked Pastor email:
So when someone says, “You’re okay,” it can feel naive. Or rebellious. Or even offensive. But what if it’s neither naive nor rebellious? What if it’s simply true? Cartoon: You’re not broken Dad Joke: I’m confused Quote: The illusion Original: My Strength That Is Within Me Merch of the Week: Jesus Eraser Sticker
I keep saying “It is what it is,” but what even is it???
Quote
I recently saw a clip from a Leonard Cohen interview. She asked him about him spending time with Roshi in a Zen monastery. He said it was like a hospital, and Roshi was the doctor. The interviewer asked what he cured him from. Cohen replied, “The illusion that you are sick. He cured me of the illusion that I needed his teachings.”
You’re Okay!
Let’s make this one short and sweet. I agree with Cohen. I also agree with Sinéad O’Connor’s therapist, who told her the whole point of therapy was to help her realize she didn’t need therapy. The same with Gabor Maté, who said that I am not broken, but just wounded. Underneath the wounds and pain is wholeness. A wholeness already there, just waiting to be embraced. These all ring true to me. When I share cartoons like the one here, The Best Healing, I get some positive comments, but also a lot of angry and offended ones.
And I understand why. I, too, was raised to believe that I was born a sinner, deeply broken and flawed and depraved, in need of a saviour to redeem me. The whole theological system and enterprise is founded upon the assertion that I am a vile sinner who needs to be saved by a divine being.I know how difficult it is to walk away from this belief, because it’s not just a belief, but a whole worldview, an entire paradigm, complete with its religion, institution, scriptures, and priests. It’s like leaving the universe to start over in a new one. One that says you’re okay. It’s a radical step, and maybe you have taken it. I’m proud of you for that.
This is total white supremacy Christian nationalism and an attempt to both roll back all civil rights of minorities and project a fake white Christians were the only good people in the country mentality. Propaganda in other words to support fragile white men’s egos and prop up declining church attendance. This is driven by people who don’t want to share the country equally with others but want everything for their group only. They want to remove an entire group of people from society, the LGBTQ+ community and go back to the pre1960s civil rights for nonwhites. Hugs
An internal government database first reported, by the Washington Post and posted on two public on Monday revealed the scope of the Trump administration’s effort to revise or remove information on African-American history, LGBT rights, climate change and other topics at hundreds of national park sites.
“The narrative being advanced is false and these draft, deliberative internal documents are not a representation of final action taken by the department,” an Interior Department spokesperson said. The National Park Service is part of the Interior Department.
United States Department of the Interior logo and U.S. flag are seen in this illustration taken April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The U.S. Interior Department said a database revealing how President Donald Trump’s administration planned to revise information on key phases of American history at national park sites was deliberative and the employees who released it “will be held accountable.”
An internal government database first reported, by the Washington Post and posted on two public on Monday revealed the scope of the Trump administration’s effort to revise or remove information on African-American history, LGBT rights, climate change and other topics at hundreds of national park sites.
“The narrative being advanced is false and these draft, deliberative internal documents are not a representation of final action taken by the department,” an Interior Department spokesperson said. The National Park Service is part of the Interior Department.
Trump has targeted cultural and historical institutions – from museums to monuments to national parks – to remove what he calls “anti-American” ideology.
His declarations and executive orders have led to the dismantling of exhibits on slavery, the restoration of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could reverse decades of progress.
The Interior Department spokesperson alleged the internal working documents were edited in a misrepresenting way before being released. The spokesperson also labeled the release as inappropriate and illegal, without specifying the law it allegedly violated.
“Employees who altered internal records and leaked in an effort to hurt the Trump administration will be held accountable,” the spokesperson added.
The Trump administration has sought to stifle internal dissent within government agencies and taken action against employees who have criticized its policies.
Last year, some employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were put on leave after they signed an open letter against the agency’s leadership, while some Environmental Protection Agency employees were fired after they signed a letter critical of the government’s actions.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus
Abortion rights supporters protest outside the supreme court in Washington in June last year. Photograph: Aashish Kiphayet/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Scottie's Playtime 
