In Photographs, She Looks Like A Scout Leader About To Ask If You’ve Had Anything To Eat Today. It

LGBTQ Nation

Meet the woman who was jailed 3 times for bringing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients

They called her Brownie Mary, and she called the young gay men she helped her kids...

In photographs, she looks like a scout leader about to ask if you’ve had anything to eat today. It takes a moment to see that often, just out of focus, her fingers are holding a joint and her vest is covered in risque pins, including an embroidered cannabis leaf.

Mary Jane Rathbun, jailed thrice and the reason for California’s groundbreaking action on medical cannabis, was better known as Brownie Mary, the patron saint of AIDS patients. More than twenty years after her death, it’s not hard to understand why this grandmotherly figure remains one of San Francisco’s most beloved activists.

She’s been called the Florence Nightingale of HIV/AIDS. She was famous for bringing her magic brownies to gay men and others suffering from wasting syndrome, a name for the deleterious effects on appetite caused by the stigmatized retrovirus.

Much like Nightingale’s work on hygiene and compassionate care, Brownie Mary’s legacy lives on in the recipes and procedures still used today in medicinal edible production.

Rathbun’s illicit distribution began in the early 1970s, when she was in her early 50s, while she worked at an IHOP in the Castro, 37 years before government-approved research finally proved that her hypothesis about distributing ingestible cannabis to AIDS patients was worth investigating. (Read more at link)

More Posts from Cockamamieman and Others

cockamamieman

1 year ago

"i'm not triggered or upset by or even ideologically opposed to it, i just associate it with something so bad that i can't enjoy it anymore" is such a frustrating relationship to have with a piece of media

Tags

s3lfharmm cvutting shblrr

5 notes View Post

cockamamieman

1 year ago

FUCKING HATE BEING TRANSGENDER

1 note View Post

cockamamieman

2 years ago

i need all fat people who want top surgery to know you are not too fat for top surgery. a competent surgeon and anesthesiologist team will make things work for you regardless of your size. if one doctor gives you shit about your weight or bmi or outright refuses to operate on you, get a second opinion. go to a second doctor. go to a third doctor. go to a million doctors until you get what you want. the dual combo of fatphobia and transphobia in medicine cannot keep us down. you do not need to be skinny to change your body how you want to change it. you do not need to be skinny for top surgery.

31K notes View Post

cockamamieman

9 months ago

448 notes View Post

cockamamieman

2 years ago

being trans & gender nonconforming is so hard. to Me my long nails are gender in a nosferatu way. to Me my long hair is gender in a metal dude way. to Me my height is gender in a columbo way. to the walmart cashier? to my coworkers, to aunt joan? to some guy at the store? i am some unkempt lady

22K notes View Post

cockamamieman

9 months ago

THREW OUT MY BLADES!!!

nobody irl knows that I had any or that I was still cutting so I don’t have anyone to celebrate with

im nervous but this is good. either way, i can always get more if I really want to. but I don’t want to want to anymore?!

this feels weird but it’s good :)

0 notes View Post