Wednesday, February 21st 2007
Stop smoking for LGBT and Feminism in the Daily Cal
I found some interesting stuff in the DC on Tuesday. I don’t mean what the dinning halls were serving in honor of Black History Month, but articles in the Daily Cal.
First there is a group that is focused on stopping smoking in the LGBT community. From the front page:
The first of seven classes aimed at helping lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people quit smoking met Saturday as part of a program to counter the high percentage of smokers in that population.
The sponsoring group is Last Drag, an LGBT anti-smoking group. According to the article the city of Berkeley also provided funds for the classes. As for why the higher percentage of LGBT smokers:
Gordon said that while there are no conclusive studies as to why smoking rates are higher in the LGBT community—about 30 percent as compared to about 15 percent among adults statewide—social factors including discrimination could encourage substance abuse.
If this has been researched and the divided system is giving better results then support groups where sexual orientation is not on the questionnaire then they have made another step toward fighting addiction.
My primary concern is sexual orientation is being used to divide people. Instead of going to a quit smoking group a person can go to a straight stop smoking or a gay stop smoking meeting. We are all human, I would think a human stop smoking group would be best.
V-Day, Feminists, and Love all the same
I posted on the op-ed this is in response to earlier. Now there is commentary in the Daily Cal direct from Taylor Allbright herself. Remember for better or worse she is running for ASUC office in two months. The letter speaks for itself, but I have one comment.
Through education and fundraising, The Vagina Monologues hopes to encourage relationships of love and respect, the kind we celebrate on Valentine’s Day.
One thing the play could do is model good male/female relationships.
Beetle Aurora Drake also posted on this.
As for feminism and the Patriot’s view, I don’t know who could forget the treatment on page 21 of the PDF in the October 2005 issue with follow up here.
This is absolutely random and unrelated…
Does anyone still keep in touch with Paul LaFata? If so, can someone email me his contact info or give him mine… grazie
Comment by alina — 2/21/2007 @ 7:44 am
incase my email doesn’t show up - its a.azizian@gmail.com
Comment by alina — 2/21/2007 @ 7:46 am
Regardless of the reasons for the higher rates of smoking in the GLBT community (I believe it has more to do with a glamorization of smoking as opposed to fighting discrimination), the rates of smoking are higher in the Queer community.
The smartest way of fighting any unhealthy behavior in society is to target the communities most at risk or most likely to partake in the behavior. This isn’t to the exclusion of other communities. There are plenty of anti-smoking groups out there without relation to sexual orientation and I am sure that Last Drag wouldn’t kick Straight people out of their meetings. The point of their meetings is to find a way to get all people (but especially Gay people) to find an interest in quitting smoking. It is really just a marketing ploy and not something worth getting upset about.
Comment by California Grown — 2/22/2007 @ 4:58 pm