So lately I’ve been noticing a lot of support chubby/fat trans post going around where they’re drawn… well.. skinny??? or at the most ~curvy~, which isn’t even chubby. So I thought, hell, I’ll draw some real representation!
If ONE MORE PERSON says “What if they’d medicated Van Gogh!?” I think I’m permitted to set things on fire. If they’d medicated Van Gogh, he’d either have painted twice as much, or he’d have been happy and unproductive. And you know what? Starry Night wasn’t worth a terrible price in human misery. It’s neat. It wasn’t worth it.
Sometimes I wonder if being an artist makes me jaded to ART. Because it’s not magic and it’s not mystical, it’s just paint or pixels. And it can do amazing things! But you don’t owe humanity to be miserable just so you can move paint around in interesting shapes. Jesus. Art is not some kind of Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas bargain where you agree to be miserable so everybody can go “oh! Neat!” for 5 minutes.
”
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Ursula Vernon, dropping the mic. [x] (via magdaliny)
“Because when I was five, my kindergarten classmate told me I couldn’t be the princess in the game we were playing because black girls couldn’t be princesses. Because I was in third grade the first time a teacher seemed shocked at how “well-spoken” I was. Because in fourth grade I was told my crush didn’t like black girls.
Because I am not seen as a woman. Because I am not allowed to be fragile. Because the nurse that checked me in at the hospital to deliver wouldn’t look my husband in the eye. Because the vast majority of people won’t look my husband in the eye. Because when the doctors put my son in my arms and I saw that he was as dark as his father, I knew life would be even harder for him.
Because I am trapped here. Because the playing field isn’t leveled. Because I love my skin. Because I love being a woman. Because not hating myself is considered radical. Because I’ve been called racist for defending myself. Because all the major protests are for cis black men. Because I’ve been told that talking about the women who’ve died is taking away from the real issue.
Because I get no break from fighting. Because everything is a struggle. Because my anger isn’t validated. Because they don’t care about my pain. Because they don’t believe in my pain. Because they forgive themselves without atoning. Because I’m not free. Because the awareness of it permeates everything. Because it’s not ending. Because they teach the children that it’s already ended. Because someone will assert their supremacy over me today. Because they’ll do it tomorrow.
The delegates were appalled by the lack of gender equality in America. They found the U.S. to be lagging far behind international human rights standards in a number of areas, including its 23 percent gender pay gap, maternity leave, affordable child care and the treatment of female migrants in detention centers.
The most telling moment of the trip, the women told reporters on Friday, was when they visited an abortion clinic in Alabama and experienced the hostile political climate around women’s reproductive rights.
“We were harassed. There were two vigilante men waiting to insult us,” said Frances Raday, the delegate from the U.K. The men repeatedly shouted, “You’re murdering children!” at them as soon as they neared the clinic, even though Raday said they are clearly past childbearing age.
“It’s a kind of terrorism,” added Eleonora Zielinska, the delegate from Poland. “To us, it was shocking.”
In most European countries, she explained, abortions are performed at general doctors’ offices and hospitals that offer all kinds of other health services, so there aren’t protesters waiting to heckle the women who enter.
The women discovered during their visit that women in the United States have “missing rights” compared to the rest of the world. For instance, the U.S. is one of three countries in the world that does not guarantee women paid maternity leave. The U.N. suggests that countries guarantee at least 14 weeks of paid parental leave. Some countries go further – Iceland requires five months paid leave for each parent, and an additional two months to be shared between them.
“The lack of accommodation in the workplace to women’s pregnancy, birth and post-natal needs is shocking,” Raday said. “Unthinkable in any society, and certainly one of the richest societies in the world.”
Another main area of concern for the delegation is violence against women – particularly gun violence. Women are 11 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the United States than in other high-income countries, and most of those murdersare perpetrated by an intimate partner. While the Obama administration has talked a lot about combatting violence against women, its efforts have been frustrated by Congress’ inability to pass new federal gun restrictions.
While the delegates were shocked by many things they saw in the U.S., perhaps the biggest surprise of their trip, they said, was learning that women in the country don’t seem to know what they’re missing. “So many people really believe that U.S. women are way better off with respect to rights than any woman in the world,” Raday said. “They would say, ‘Prove it! What do you mean other people have paid maternity leave?’”
The US is so far behind in women’s rights, people don’t even believe that other countries allow Paid. Maternity. Leave. Good lord.
Looking forward to the scene where a little kid is cured of their cancer after playing Depression Quest.
Or her and Sarkeesian going to the UN to discuss world peace and everything is sundrops and rainbows.
I hope there’s a sex scene to truly portray how much effort she’s made in order to display her outstanding game.
I can’t wait till the big end speech were she convinces all the horrible GamerGaters to shave their neck beards and become feminists.
i hope it’s a musical
congrats gamergaters: your unrelenting harassment of an unknown indie dev and slightly-better-known critic got one of them onto the colbert report, both of them to the UN, and apparently now one of them is getting a movie. i didn’t know it was possible to be SO BAD at PR that you not only make yourselves look bad, but actually propel your targets literally onto an international platform, while the best you can do is hang out with neo-nazis on reddit. gg, GG. gg.
In the event of a fire consult this 5-year-old. On Wednesday Cloe Woods of Louisiana saved her dog and blind grandmother when a fire broke out in her house. When the smoke alarm woke Cloe, she immediately went to her grandmother’s room and led her outside. Why she ran door to door after escaping.
Is there a gofundme to help her and her grandmother get back on her feet? Because this girl needs all the things!!!
For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
In all seriousness this is what I’m talking about whenever I go off on how the rich can’t even spend their fucking money. Do you honestly think these fuckers are getting that much enjoyment out of these goddamn gummy bears compared to regular store-bought one? No, they get enjoyment out of the CONCEPT of them, out of the thrill of conspicuous consumption in the face of people who actually have to work for a living, or who, god forbid, don’t even have the opportunity.
So they’ll buy seven houses when you would be hard-pressed to justify them owning two, and they’ll buy huge-ass limousines and designer clothes just to look a tiny bit cooler (as if any real fan of a celebrity gives a fuck about the label they’re wearing rather than the content they put out, or the persona they have, or even the way the outfit actually LOOKS), and they’ll pay out the ass for ludicrously expensive ingredients placed in such ludicrously tiny portions that they can barely fucking taste them.
I don’t understand it even slightly. I can barely imagine what I’d do with $150,000 a year, much less millions. And I’m not even like a “simple pleasures” fanatic – sure, I get the appeal of a second house! I get the appeal of regular vacations! I get the appeal of eating steak five nights a week, drinking expensive champagne! But wealth disparity has become so fucking absurd in this country and on this planet that those quasi-reasonable luxuries aren’t enough, so they have to make up bullshit that can’t possibly even be enjoyable in its own right just so they can feel good about having money.
“Decent male humans, this is not your fault, but it also does not have nothing to do with you. If a woman is frosty or standoffish or doesn’t laugh at your joke, consider the notion that maybe she is not an uptight, humorless bitch, but rather has had experiences that are outside your realm of understanding, and have adversely colored her perception of the world. Consider that while you’re just joking around, a woman might actually be doing some quick mental math to see if she’s going to have to hide in a fucking bathroom stall and call someone to come help her, like I did three days ago.
Please adjust your mindset and your words accordingly.”
All these people think “political correctness” and “social justice” are sudden, inexplicable plagues upon the internet because they now get yelled at if they say something shitty.
But the truth is, social media has just grown to the point where your internet posts are far, far more public. That’s it. That’s the difference.
If you stood on a street corner and spouted racist jokes even forty years ago, you would probably get garbage thrown at you or your lights punched out sooner or later.This is just the real world. You can learn to play nicely with others or you can stay out of it.
In an adorable video featuring a number of different cat memes, Nissan Motors reminds drivers to knock-knock on the top of the hood before starting the car in order to gently startle away any cats who might have sought warmth and shelter in or on the vehicle.
You can save a cat’s life just by knocking on a car hood before driving. In the cold of winter, some cats try to warm themselves by hiding under car hoods. However, this may lead to a tragic outcome if you start a car without checking. “Knock Knock Cats” is a technique to avoid such tragedies. It’s the little efforts that can save precious lives,
and Nissan supports a society where everyone, including cats, is safer.
Mental illness is all in your head. Heart disease is all in your chest. Glaucoma is all in your eye. I already know which parts of the human body can have a problem. I am going to do great on my first day at medical school.
this is explicitly confirmed in the before the awakening anthology
he is literally being fucking deployed as a solider in the beginning of the film
he
is
not
a janitor
he is a rookie trooper who like all other rookie troopers hadn’t done anything prior to his first deployment but training and menial shit
oh my gooooooooooood
Totally true!!
And it really sucks that fandom would use Finn’s sanitation duty to belittle him, since
A) no matter what his training/position he proves himself to be an excellent marksman, pilot, a quick learner, and v capable at dueling & close combat within the span of the movie
B) He’s canonically one of the brightest and most gifted soldiers any of the Order have seen, and is being considered for a position of authority
C) Most importantly: Sanitation is a fucking hard job!!!!!
Sanitation workers are much more likely to die on the job than firefighters or cops, it’s physically demanding and their work is vital to the safety and well-being of others– (not to mention man-eating space worms hanging around lolol)
–even if Finn’s role WAS mainly as a sanitation worker, that would be no reason for ppl to write him off as less than anyone else- especially since we all agree that Rey being a scavenger is badass-
Like if anything, the fact that Finn worked sanitation just makes him cooler imo
@HamillHimself people are being mean to ur space sister :// Bring it! She doesn’t need me or anyone else to defend her- she’s just that fierce. Love my movie sis. #CarrieRules
some entity: [possesses me] i-
me: FINALLY. alright, you're taking everything from here? you're good? i'll be in the back getting some rest, come get me if you need me
entity: you-
me: you know what? you're right. why hang around when i can just go on vacation? souls can do that, right? so it's settled! see ya whenever. call me if you need anything, have any questions, et cetera
entity: i don't have your number-
me, glancing back, suitcases already packed: what? oh, shi- seriously? did you really think i meant-? it was.. i just said that because that's what you're supposed to say. i didn't MEAN it. that was the whole point. don't need anything. don't call me. won't even.. have a phone on me. i've got no physical body, buddy. man, you're such a kidder.. a good sense of humor will get you far. anyway! you've got this. [kicks the door open] have fun! i'll be back... probably
Don't forget classism. That's another big one. Also the effects of familial stress on children, which causes them to lash out at anyone weaker than them.
Unpopular opinion that shouldn’t be unpopular: anti-bullying programs in school that don’t address the root causes of bullying - which are almost invariably larger forms of bigotry and oppression like racism, ableism and homophobia - are completely useless and ultimately futile.
When I brought this up in front of the Seattle Times Editorial Board they gave me the strangest look and my heart sort of sank into oblivion.
The whole discourse on bullying is purposefully meant to distract from systems of oppression and to simultaneously place blame on oppression on students in general. The whole thing about middle/high school inherently being a place where children are bullied is also used by school administrators to ignore what influence systemic oppression has in a specific incident (notably when fighting is involved) and then punish the bullied student for their reactions.
I’ve seen this image going around, and I feel compelled to point out that it’s only half-right. It’s true that high heels were originally a masculine fashion, but they weren’t originally worn by butchers - nor for any other utilitarian purpose, for that matter.
High heels were worn by men for exactly the same reason they’re worn by women today: to display one’s legs to best effect. Until quite recently, shapely, well-toned calves and thighs were regarded as an absolute prerequisite for male attractiveness. That’s why you see so many paintings of famous men framed to show off their legs - like this one of George Washington displaying his fantastic calves:
… or this one of Louis XIV of France rocking a fabulous pair of red platform heels (check out those thighs!):
… or even this one of Charles I of England showing off his high-heeled riding boots - note, again, the visual emphasis on his well-formed calves:
In summary: were high heels originally worn by men? Yes. Were they worn to keep blood off their feet? No at all - they were worn for the same reason they’re worn today: to look fabulous.
so then how did they become a solo feminine item of attire?
A variety of reasons. In France, for example, high heels fell out out of favour in the court of Napoleon due to their association with aristocratic decadence, while in England, the more conservative fashions of the Victorian era regarded it as indecent for a man to openly display his calves.
But then, fashions come and go. The real question is why heels never came back into fashion for men - and that can be laid squarely at the feet of institutionalised homophobia. Essentially, heels for men were never revived because, by the early 20th Century, sexually provocative attire for men had come to be associated with homosexuality; the resulting moral panic ushered in an era of drab, blocky, fully concealing menswear in which a well-turned calf simply had no place - a setback from which men’s fashion has yet to fully recover.
FASHION HISTORY IS HUMAN HISTORY OK
Thank you, history side of tumblr. That “stay out of blood” thing has been driving me mad.
Wait. So, you’re telling me that the reason straight boys dress horribly is because they’re not over a 100 year old gay panic?
You’re telling me that the gross, baggy, shapeless menswear that has been almost singlehandedly ruining my life is the result of a bunch of dudes in the 1900’s collectively going ‘AAAAH WHAT IF THEY THINK WE’RE GAY’
when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,
and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back
!!!
It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious.
This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
On a flight from Mexico to Rome Thursday after a six-day trip that included a visit to Cuba, Pope Francis told reporters that using contraception to avoid infecting fetuses with the Zika virus is better than abortions to terminate pregnancies in which the fetus is infected. The virus has been linked to some cases of microcephaly in newborns. The pope called abortion an "absolute evil" and a "crime” and reiterated the church’s stance that it is always wrong:
"It is to kill someone in order to save another. This is what the Mafia does," Francis said. "On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil."
The Pope then pointed to a narrow exception to the church's ban on most forms of birth control: His predecessor, Pope Paul VI, allowed African nuns who were raped to use contraception, Francis said. He did not explain why and what forms of birth control were used.
"In certain cases ... such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear," the Pope said. It was Paul VI who wrote "Humanae Vitae," the papal document that solidified the church's stance against almost every form of birth control in 1968. The church does allow natural family planning, which involves a woman monitoring her basal body temperature and vaginal secretions to avoid having sex at fertile times of the month.
That is likely to encourage health officials in Latin America but irk Catholic conservatives who view the church’s teaching that anything which works to "'render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil.”
While “pro-life” Catholic activists take a hard stance on the matter, regardless of the circumstances, other highly placed Catholics do not:
"The polemical approach, that contraception is devious or demonic in origin or the smoke of Satan, may ultimately not be the best pastoral approach," said the Rev. James Bretzke, a professor of theology at Boston College.
And among the Catholic rank and file, CNN religious editor Daniel Burke notes, the attitude in Latin America is very much at odds with the Vatican’s overall stance on contraception. A poll by the Spanish-language network Univision found that 88 percent of Mexicans, 91 percent of Colombians and 93 percent of Brazilians support the use of contraceptives.
In another break from his predecessors, the pope also told reporters on the overnight flight that Catholic lawmakers are free to vote for same-sex marriage and civil unions. In 2003, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, approved a document from the Vatican’s doctrinal office—which he then ran—categorically forbidding Catholic legislators from voting for same-sex marriage or unions. Pope Francis’s change not quite Vatican approval of marriage equality, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
