I love my dog. If ever I cry, he collects up dirty socks and brings them to me. They’re his favourite thing in the world and they make him happy, so they’ll make me happy too. He’s a good boy.
1. There are a lot of very angry men out there who claim to only want equality, but will get super abusive when you ask what they’re doing to actually help other men. I’ve been on twitter for four years and I blocked three times as many people
in four hours
as I have in that entire time.
2. Some men who don’t actually associate with the MRM or anti-feminism are doing some cool things like opening shelters for male victims of DV and giving talks about depression and suicide prevention. A lot of MRAs want to pretend that was their doing, even though they had nothing to do with it. They will tell you it’s because of their years of campaigning for awareness, but struggle to point to any actual campaigns for awareness that can be linked to the MRM.
3. Although MRAs and anti-feminists share a lot of the same ideology (and a lot of the same memes and rape jokes), they are not the same thing. Anti-Feminists get quite upset when you label them as MRAs.
4. Anti-feminists like to accuse feminists of not having any real issues, and then at the same time like to joke about how ‘weird’ it is that feminists are always going on about rape and domestic violence. Apparently those things aren’t real issues, but it’s also totally weird how advocates for the rights of marginalized people would go on and on about issues which disproportionately affect marginalized people.
5. The MRM is as varied as feminism. This was actually really good to learn. There are men out there who just genuinely care about helping other men, and they are genuinely sad that the movement has been hijacked by assholes. They want nothing to do with PUAs and men like Paul Elam, they’re just trying to help men who need it in the same ways feminism helps women. When I asked them why they didn’t join the feminists who were already helping men, they said they a) didn’t believe in the patriarchy or b) felt like feminism was for women, and they wanted their own thing.
6. A lot people apparently think feminists made up the word ‘patriarchy’ and that there’s nothing at all which signifies Western culture as patriarchal. It’s a shame the word has lost so much of its meaning. I feel like it used to be a useful tool for explaining power structures, and now it’s just a word that makes people roll their eyes and shut off.
7. Earl Silverman was pretty vile, but he did do some good stuff. He opened a shelter for male victims of DV, and gave talks about depression and suicide. Unfortunately the MRM did absolutely nothing to support him in this, and after he died they blamed feminism for his shelter being underfunded.
8. No one could provide me with any evidence of the MRM helping gay men, trans men, and Men of Color, disabled men, and no one in the MRM seems especially concerned about the rights of male sex workers. It seems the movement is fairly focused on the issues of people in the majority, and from what I can tell there is very little motivation to embrace intersectionality in the way third/fourth-wave feminism is attempting to do.
9. I tried to calmly discuss statistics with a bunch of different dudes, and I was told every time that I was just spreading man-hating propaganda. Apparently the UN and RAINN have an agenda to bring down men. Who knew?
10. For the most part, people are people. Most of the anti-feminists I came across were pretty young and sheltered. I think a lot of them actually knew very little about feminism, beyond what they had heard about from other anti-feminists on reddit. They would say things like, “There’s no evidence we live in a patriarchal society” which, even if you don’t believe in the feminist interpretation of patriarchy, is pretty ignorant of the actual meaning of patriarchy. Their comments about rape culture made it pretty clear they didn’t really understand what rape culture means. Similarly, a lot of the MRAs I spoke to seemed kind of confused about their ideology, and when I really got into it with them a lot of them agreed that men’s rights and feminism shouldn’t be at odds with each other. Even the gamergate-sad-facial-hair dudebro I spent ages going back and forth with didn’t seem especially full of rage, he just seemed terribly misinformed.
Bonus fact: MRAs will always mention how they’re campaigning for men’s reproductive rights, but then get super vague and cagey when you want them to explain what that would actually look like, and the ways that their apparent lack of reproductive rights is affecting their health and bodily autonomy.
This is a point I’ve been making for a while - when you look at the people criticizing feminism, especially the concern trolls (”feminists don’t care about ____!”), 99% of them can’t demonstrate ONE SINGLE THING that they’ve ever done to help women and/or LGBTQIA+ folks. They just whine and complain about feminists, who actually ARE trying to - and making - a difference!
Even when you give them a chance to show that they really do care about women and LGBTQIA+, you get a silence that speaks volumes.
“Now that Daisy Ridley’s Rey and John Boyega’s Finn have given the Star Wars franchise its first female Jedi and black lead, respectively, does its fearless director J.J. Abrams see a future for a gay character in the galaxy?
“Of course!” Abrams said Thursday night at his Bad Robot HQ, where he hosted the US-Ireland Alliance’s annual Oscar Wilde Awards ahead of Sunday’s Oscars, where The Force Awakens is nominated in five categories. “When I talk about inclusivity it’s not excluding gay characters. It’s about inclusivity. So of course.”
By Abrams’ logic, the sprawling Star Wars universe couldn’t possibly exist without a gay populace—even if we haven’t seen a single character identified as gay thus far. “I would love it,” he said. “To me, the fun of Star Wars is the glory of possibility. So it seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world.”
“It’s in private meetings, it’s in private phone calls, it’s in interviews,” he said. “I know that this will happen. I know it will. Not just on camera but behind the camera.”
“It’s important for young girls and women to see images of heroines who aren’t princesses waiting to be rescued and Veronica Mars is just that: a young woman who frequently helps people around her who just don’t care what others say about her.”
We're currently doing a rewatch of Xena. And it's amazing how well that show holds up. I mean, yeah, it's cheesy, and it's got episodes I will not watch again, but damn, they get some shit RIGHT.
“When I started as an actor, no one knew what to do with me. I was usually maybe about 6 inches to a foot taller than most of the actors, so I couldn’t play the girlfriend, I couldn’t play the wife, I was a little too overwhelming to be the best friend, they didn’t want me next to the lead because I was usually a foot taller than the lead… And then, God bless him, Rob Tapert, who created Xena and the Hercules franchises said, ’I know exactly what to do with you! I’m gonna give you a sword! I’m gonna make you as scary as everybody thinks you are!’” - Gina Torres
my headcanon for startrek is that humans look, to vulcans, like a dog frathouse. like signing on to a human ship is exactly that thrillingly loud and frustrating and fast and stupid and fun. the humans are going to dash off to a new sector to see if there are friends there and then they will jump up and down with delight and stuff their faces up against their new friends’ genital array. the humans are going to bark for ten minutes at a rock. the humans want to chase things they can’t possibly catch just because they like running around. the humans are madly passionate about their arbitrary group identities. the humans can be divided into new arbitrary group identities which they will then be passionate about. the humans want to stick their heads out of the window of their starship and go ‘wheee!’. if you step on a human’s paw they will act like you just killed them for about thirty seconds and then want more headpats. the humans can be immediately distracted from crucial duties by the appearance of a small animal. if you howl all the humans in earshot will howl louder just to show off. a human just humped your leg. ‘don’t make it weird bro’ the human says. later the human will dig a weird bug out of the ground and eat it.
Tagged: “#spock: when i look at you i feel shame #kirk: that’s nice but i bet i can eat the next bug twice as fast”
"It’s a testament to just how flailing and reactionary Gov. Snyder has become. He clearly has no idea what he’s doing so he’s rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship."
To be fair, that's pretty much all he's done the entire time he's been governor. If the state agencies had been spending half the effort they've been spending on re-organizations since he was elected on, you know, actually performing the duties we're supposed to be preforming, the state wouldn't still be needing "emergency manager" in all the cities that have have a majority black populace.
Oh... wait... I get it now.
The story of malignant negligence in Flint, Michigan, keeps getting worse. In a review of 550 emails released by Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder this week, Detroit Free Press reporters Matthew Dolan and Paul Egan found that the governor was informed early on after Flint stopped getting its drinking water from the Detroit water system and switched to the Flint River as a source that the city’s water quality plunged.
The emails also showed that an effort was made at the time to keep the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) out of the loop so that tainted-water worries would not be subject to discovery via the Freedom of Information Act. Michigan exempts the governor's office and legislature from public records disclosure. The governor began releasing another 6,000-8,000 emails Friday, so more revelations can be expected.
As a consequence of the switch to Flint River water in 2014, at least 100,000 city residents drank lead-contaminated water for more than a year. In September, a pediatrician found a spike in lead levels in Flint children. Lead contamination in tiny amounts is a powerful neurotoxin that can cause irreversible brain damage and other developmental problems in children. Many scientists say there is no safe level.
While the original character of Danny Rand is white, proponents have pointed out that the casting for the Netflix show is an opportunity to add diversity to the Defenders lineup and the Marvel Cinematic Universe overall, as well as sidestep concerns regarding cultural appropriation. The call for Netflix and Marvel to cast an actor of Asian descent began with fan petitions, becoming a Twitter hashtag and inspiring online thinkpieces before being picked up by mainstream media outlets. In response, Marvel reportedly met with Asian-American actors when casting the role.
Danny Rand, known as Iron Fist, first debuted in the 1970s in the wake of a kung-fu movie craze. In the comics, Danny Rand’s father discovers the otherworldly Asian city of K’un-L’un and brings his son there to train in martial arts. Danny grows up, fights the dragon Shou-Lao, and earns a dragon tattoo (burned onto his chest) that grants him the power of the “iron fist”—the ability to harness his chi and make his fists unbreakable when attacking. In December 2015, Comics Alliance published an extensive commentary into the issues surrounding the canonical Danny Rand, centering on this white savior’s appropriation of Asian culture:
It’s a standard example of the white savior trope, commonly associated with movies Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, and even The Help, in which a white visitor becomes the only one who can save a culture that’s framed as ‘less civilized’, while he or she also learns valuable lessons from the uncorrupted spirituality of the people. These stories treat non-white or non-Western cultures as exotic playgrounds for the improvement of white people, and they assuage white colonial guilt by turning indigenous cultures into grateful beneficiaries of Western ‘discovery’, while also reducing the people in those cultures to props.
In March 2014, more than a year before the series premieres of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, Keith Chow of The Nerds of Color created the hashtag #AAIronFist to make the case for casting an Asian-American actor as Danny. His petition was met with resistance from readers who believed that race-bending Danny would take away the central tenets of his story, namely his outsider status in K’un-L’un. What detractors hadn’t considered, Chow pointed out, is that Danny being Asian-American wouldn’t make him any less of an outsider:
First, let’s get a couple of misconceptions out of the way. My call for an Asian American Iron Fist is not meant to displace Danny Rand from the story. It is, in fact, the opposite. In my mind, casting a young Asian American in the lead role does nothing to change his classic origin: He can still be the son of a wealthy businessman. He can still accompany his family on an expedition to seek out K’un L’un. He can still train under Lei Kung, the Thunderer. He can still seek revenge against the man who killed his father. Danny being Asian American precludes none of these things.
I think a lot of people tend to fall back on the idea that Danny is an outsider and the people of K’un L’un don’t accept him readily, and as an Asian American person I’m like, that doesn’t mean you have to be white for that to happen. Plenty of Asian American people who grew up in America, if they were to stumble into this mystical Asian city, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be accepted right away either.
With Marvel directors and comic book writers like Lexi Alexander and Marjorie Liu throwing their support behind #AAIronFist, the petition got picked up by mainstream entertainment news outlets in late 2015. The Hollywood Reporter claimed, via sources, that Marvel had auditioned Asian-American actors for the part; hopes were briefly buoyed by a leaked casting call that didn’t specify the ethnicity of the presumed lead. Unfortunately, those same THR sources then reported that Marvel was “now leaning toward keeping Iron Fist white.” That was in December 2015, and yesterday’s news confirms Marvel’s decision.
Within hours of the news of Jones’ casting, the backlash was immediate: “Iron Fist” began trending on Twitter, with over 12,000 tweets; even more people than before called out Marvel using #AAIronFist.
You missed a huge opportunity, @Marvel. You cast a great actor, but you didn’t cast the right actor. It hurts. #IronFist#AAIronFist
“We refuse to do our jobs.” -The United States Senate
“We represent the will of those who elected us, and those people are presumably also going to sit around until 2017 waving a flag and Bible in one hand and frantically jerkin’ it with the other.”
If the senate was a corporation they’d be written up by their supervisor for insubordination.
In all seriousness, every single one of these lazy whiners should be expelled from the Senate. Don’t want to do your fucking job? Fine. Go home.
VOTE THESE FUCKERS OUT.
TO PROTECT THE WILL OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, YOU HACKS? THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ELECTED PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA TO SERVE THROUGH JANUARY 20, 2017, NOW DO YOUR FUCKING JOBS.
ngl I worked in retail for 18 years and I’m sure it’s responsible for like 75% of my anxiety issues
Things you will be punished for in retail(and to a lesser extent any sort of customer service job): Doing nothing. Doing something. Saying the right thing. Not saying exactly the right thing. Doing a task incorrectly. Doing a task correctly. Moving too fast. Not moving fast enough. Following instructions. Not taking the initiative(i.e., ignoring instructions). Sticking up for yourself. Not sticking up for yourself. Calling the manager. Not calling the manager. Correcting customers when they’re wrong about things. Not correcting customers when they’re wrong about things. Sitting down ever for any reason. Taking a break. Not taking a break. Clocking in too early. Clocking in too late. Clocking out early. Clocking out late. Speaking up during staff meetings. Not speaking up during staff meetings. Complaining about your schedule. Accepting your schedule as-is without complaint. Calling out sick when you’re sick. Not calling out sick when you’re sick. Taking your vacation days(ha! vacation days! I kill me). Not using your vacation days. I could go on, but I’m sure I’ve belabored the point by now.
tl;dr: You will be punished in some way, by someone, for literally everything you ever do while working in retail. So, yes, absolutely a great cause of anxiety.
The sad thing is, this isn’t even hyperbole. Like I can give concrete personal examples for everything on this list. Doing a task correctly? Why/how would you ever get in trouble for that?? WELL LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.
Older guy, maybe in his 50s comes in with a Visa slip and asks for a refund. Thing is, he has no receipt, he just has the charge slip. And he wants the amount on the charge slip credited back to the card. Only it’s not his card; it has a woman’s name on it (apparently it was his daughter). It’s from another state. It’s for a gift card. Now all these things being equal, it was store policy that we did not give refunds for gift cards. There was even a big sign at the register. ‘No refunds on gift cards’. When I pointed this out to to the man, he very loudly demanded to know “what kind of [Jewish slur] operation is this??”
Fuck this guy, I thought. I saw the manager coming in the door from his lunch break so I flagged him down and told him I wasn’t going to help Sir and could he please take care of it. I then stormed off to the break room to calm down a little because I was a Customer Service Professional and showing emotion was a sign of weakness.
Two hours later I was called into the office for reprimands and to sign off on a negative progress report (or risk termination) because I failed to help the customer who complained about my shitty attitude. I mentioned the slur. I was told that I should have just ignored it, done what he asked, and let him go on his merry way.
Despite the fact that what he was asking, aside from being EXTREMELY SHADY, was also AGAINST COMPANY POLICY. So in refusing to offer him a refund, as I was instructed to do by the company, i.e. doing my task correctly, I was punished.
Hell is retail.
(incidentally the guy got his refund and I subsequently had to sit down for an interview with Loss Prevention, i.e. the guys whose literal full-time job it is to bust employees for stealing, because it was my ID number on the transaction. I cheerfully threw my manager under the bus on that one.)
One time i got written up for throwing away cauliflower that was so rotten half of it was liquid. “Contributing to shrink” was the official reason. I got a write up and a lecture. They expected that I would fish through a twelve ounce bag of cauliflower rot to find the one or two good florets, give ‘em a rinse and use them.
