i was 14 and i was walking through a mall by myself at 12am after my shift at coldstone creamery lol and a bunch of men started whistling and meowing and getting really close to me and they kept asking me questions and i kept not answering until i didn’t know what else to do so i said “i’m only 14” and almost in unison they said “we don’t care” i was so fucking scared i didn’t know what to do and they kept talking about how i looked and how my body looked and what they would do i was on the verge of tears i was all alone in a huge mall i knew i couldn’t outrun them all i felt totally hopeless until a maintenance worker came up to all of us with a huge industrial broom in her hand, i thought she was going to yell at all of us for being in the mall after hours bc she probably thought we were all friends but instead she cursed all of them out in spanish, threatened to press a panic button on her belt and then proceeded to walk me to the basement garage and waited with me until my mom got there to pick me up she had a death grip on her cart the whole time and a face of steel she looked so strong and i just kept saying thank you and she kept saying not to thank her because she had to stop them.
that was the moment i realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other bc nobody else is going to, she didn’t even know me, we couldn’t even communicate that well because of the language barrier, she could have lost her job for waiting with me in the parking lot but she looked out for me when she didn’t have to, she had nothing to gain from it, i’m 21 now and i tell everyone this story even though it happened 7 years ago, what she did that night helped me form and shape lot of my beliefs early on.
i was at a grocery store really late one night and some old guy kind of eyed me as i walked out of the store next to this other lady. She and I made eye contact and i knew she was scared too. we loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me. I panicked because i was sure she was going to leave so i just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then i noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away.
And that was the moment that I realized how much women need other women. That we can’t win this war without each other and we have to be looking out for each other, every second.
my last year in new york city, i got off the subway around 9 or 10p.m. i only lived about 5 blocks from the f train, but i hadn’t gotten more than two before a woman’s hand suddenly touched my arm.
“that guy behind us is following you,” she said. “he was watching you leave the train car and followed you up.”
i hadn’t noticed him, or at least not noticed him following me. when we stopped outside a grocery store, he stopped half a block back and loitered. the woman linked her arm with mine and walked me several blocks out of her way to my front door and made sure i got inside safely.
another time, nocigar and i were walking home and at a stoplight a stranger grabbed my arm when i wouldn’t respond to him and tried to physically drag me over to him. she—who is, by the way, not a very physically imposing girl—ripped his hand off my arm and snarled, “don’t fucking touch her.”
protect your friends. protect strangers. there are good men in the world, but don’t wait for them to do something if you can do it yourself.
I was at a club once and my friend left with her boyfriend so I finished my drink and was heading out to the parking lot when three girls came up to me and basically surrounded me.
“Those guys behind us were talking about following you. We can walk with you.”
I have MMA training but have never in my life had been offered the protection and sanction of my own gender. This is so important.
GIRL CODE. FUCKIN’ GIRL CODE. LEAVE NO GIRL BEHIND. EVER.
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How could you be against free college. Like if I think about student loans for more than a few minutes I think about jumping off a cliff have some pity damn
Because hundreds of thousands of people have already paid for their tuition. Should they be reimbursed? It’s not fair to the people who have already paid/ are paying for college. That’s why.
Yeah I love thinking how my kids are gonna cry and have panic attacks because of the heavy student loans they’re gonna have just because they want to go to a good school. Yeah I really want them to suffer just like I did bc yknow I paid why should they have it any easier than me?? I don’t want America to be better than I found it. Fuck future generations.
It’s not just this person, it’s a mindset that’s endemic in this entire country, a corollary to fuck you got mine: it states if I had to go through horribly unfair miserable experiences for no good reason, EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD TOO GODDAMNIT.
Nobody should get access to decent healthcare without going bankrupt because that’s not fair to the people who went bankrupt already. Nothing should ever be improved because it’s not fair to the generations who lived through a world that lacked those improvements. If I had to work three horrible demeaning exhausting benefit-free jobs to be able to eat and sleep indoors, so should everybody else.
It’s the crab bucket. It’s poisonous. It’s always been poisonous. It’s behind the long-standing tradition of people voting for politicians whose stated aims are to ensure that their lives will continue to be unnecessarily difficult, full of suffering, and short.
It’s weird how a generation seemed to not get the “make the world better for your children than it was for you” memo. Like, I thought that was the fucking CRUX of the American dream. Not this bullshit “I got mine so fuck you, moochers” bullshit we’re slogging through now.
This is amazing: For the past six years, Colorado has provided teen and low-income women access to free birth control. The result? According to the state’s department of public health, the birthrate among teens statewide plunged 40% between 2009 and 2013. Abortions fell 42% in the same period. [CDPHE via NYT]
One time I was working at the jewelry counter at work and I was showcasing some diamond necklaces to an older lady and I was always taught to try to connect with people in order to make a sale and so we were talking about her husband blah blah blah and she goes “are you married”
…………
Now the normal response to say is no, since I am not married
However I didn’t comprehend what she said and I was like yeah
So I quickly had to switch my ring on to my ring finger and make up a fictional spouse on the spot
And to this day she comes in periodically asking about my wife Morgan (who is now pregnant with twins!) and I mean I have been stuck with this alternate fictional life for a year and a half now
Our anniversary is Wednesday if anyone wants to get us anything
The ominous FBI (or Department of Homeland Security) “terror warning” has become such a staple of the on-going, seemingly endless “war on terror” (d/b/a war on ISIS), we hardly even notice it anymore. Marked by a feedback loop of extremist propaganda, unverifiable claims about “online chatter” and fuzzy pronouncements issued by a neverending string of faceless Muslim bad guys, and given PR cover by FBI-contrived “terror plots,” the specter of the impending “attack” is part of a broader white noise of fear that never went away after 9/11. Indeed, the verbiage employed by the FBI in this latest warning —“we’re asking people to remain vigilant”—implies no actual change of the status quo, just an hysterical nudge to not let down our collective guard.
There’s only one problem: These warnings never actually come to fruition. Not rarely, or almost never, but—by all accounts—never. No attacks, no arrests, no suspects at large.
“I’m tired of people romanticizing overexertion. Exhausted is not the new chic, coffee (though a delicious necessity) is not a food group, and running on fumes is not admirable. Why do we hold pedestals for sleepless nights, breakdowns, and inner turmoil? Are those really things to aspire to? Self-care. Balance. The ability to know when your body, mind, and spirit need to take a step back. Those are things we should admire. We have to stop blurring the line between ‘commitment’ and self-endangerment because too many people are burning out before they have a chance to truly shine.”
- my opinion on the way we envision hard work and the way we should live life (via runningmandz)
White guys are so proud of their ability to be not offended. When one of them tells a rape joke or uses a racial slur, they wink and pat themselves on the back and give endless attaboys for their superior skills in being not offended. They decry the “politically correct” society they find themselves in and look down on anyone who has the lack of fortitude to be offended by anything.
Of course, what allows them to be not offended at rape jokes and racial slurs is that they are not targeted at them. For white guys, these are fun toys to play with; while for much of the rest of the world, they are tools of violence and oppression. Not just relics of the past, but very much alive and well today. So, then, the magical quality that allows these guys to remain so aloof and above-it-all is, quite simply, privilege.
And if you want to watch hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance in action, simply bring up privilege to these not offended white guys and see how fast and hard they become offended. Privilege is a concept so simple and obvious that most social scientists take it as axiomatic, but the mere mention of it gets these guys worked up into a rage. They’re so proud of their ability to be not offended by oppressive language and stereotypes, but they’ll be damned if you point out why. Funny. It’s almost as if they are the beneficiaries of systems of oppression and want to subtly encourage those systems so as to continue benefiting, while simultaneously stifling all mention of those systems, so as to mollify their fragile egos and underused consciences.
But by all means; continue to congratulate yourself on your superior ability to be not offended by oppression and cruelty.
here’s to the kids that use fictional characters as a way of coping. here’s to the kids that stay up late crying to their favourite characters. here’s to the kids that imagine their favourite character by their side when they’re experiencing bad anxiety in public. here’s to the kids that need works of fiction to keep on surviving.
adding a shootout to adults who cope in this way too. life doesn’t become easy just because you’ve grown up.
I've also heard this being used to explain why we shouldn't have universal health care. Because, "Well, I was mistreated, so I have to mistreat you," isn't seen as proof of a mental disorder.
How could you be against free college. Like if I think about student loans for more than a few minutes I think about jumping off a cliff have some pity damn
Because hundreds of thousands of people have already paid for their tuition. Should they be reimbursed? It’s not fair to the people who have already paid/ are paying for college. That’s why.
Yeah I love thinking how my kids are gonna cry and have panic attacks because of the heavy student loans they’re gonna have just because they want to go to a good school. Yeah I really want them to suffer just like I did bc yknow I paid why should they have it any easier than me?? I don’t want America to be better than I found it. Fuck future generations.
By this logic we should all be living in caves eating raw bugs because fuck ever improving anything my children need to experience the joy of flesh-eating parasites and malnutrition just like I did.
Good lord I’m not saying “you personally have to be violently harmed by cishets to be queer” I’m saying that the term is exclusively reserved for the communities who’ve historically experienced oppression centered around that slur and experienced the violence that it embodies (ie LGBT people)
You’re spouting some nonsense interpretation where you could say “some lesbians are queer but not all” when what I’m literally saying is “lesbians can call themselves queer because the lesbian community has been a target of this slur and experienced horrific violence as part of it”. Ace/aro people who lack same-gender attraction have no place trying to reclaim it because it was never aimed at their community.
Except that historically, people have absolutely been targeted as queer for asexual behavior.
Everybody feel free to grab a beverage and get comfortable, because I spent a lot of time on Google today. (Asexuals, listen up, because we actually have some situations where you are represented in history here.)
Historically, people got labelled queer, and/or queer-bashed, for two major things.
The first was deviating from strict gender norms.
The second was not having hetero sex.
There are tons of examples of white people literature from the 1800s and early 1900s that use terms like “confirmed bachelor” and “spinster aunt” to imply that somebody was queer.
(I was going to say something like European/American/Canadian literature, but let’s call a spade a spade.)
Sure, nowadays we look back at that and go, “everybody knew those people were gay, it was just code for gay, nobody thought anybody was asexual, that wasn’t a thing back then.”
Of course, that still means that people who we would now call asexual would have been getting queer-bashed because people thought they were gay. So all those asexual people, already, have earned their queer stripes under the rubric above – that they are part of a community that got violently oppressed for being perceived as queer.
But is that all that was happening? Were straight people actually cool with people who they thought just weren’t having any sex at all?
Let’s see! (This is code for “hell no.”)
My favorite example that I came across was the Spinster Movement.
The Spinster Movement was really long-lived, from around the 1880s through the 1930s. It was a group of women who either felt no sexual attraction, or felt some sexual attraction but didn’t want to have sex. (I will be the first to say that I’m sure that there were also members who nowadays would identify as lesbian, bi, and trans. But it wasn’t the focus.)
The movement particularly focused on opposing sex work, sex trafficking, and child sexual abuse. It was deeply tied up in the suffrage movement, which fought for the vote specifically so that women could oppose these things in the political arena. (There’s a lot more about this in a book called The Spinster and Her Enemies, by Sheila Jeffreys.)
“[in Norway], in
the 1920s and 1930s, female sexuality was suddenly discovered and all
women were supposed to have and enjoy their sexuality. At this point,
frigidity and asexuality also became a topic, a very problematic topic.
“You could say that the spinsters became queer because they didn’t have
sex or didn’t take part in sexual activities, and also because they
started to be perceived as potentially homosexual.
“Thus, the romantic
spinster friendships of the earlier phase that were not seen as
problematic in a sexual way became highly problematic in the 1920s and
1930s. Suddenly, all female relationships were seen as suspicious, they
were seen in a new sexual light.“
Notice the “and also” – they were queer for not having sex, AND they were queer for starting to be perceived as possibly lesbians.
In fact, “spinsters” were routinely slammed this way. In Britain, for example, the teachers’ union was attacked over and over with the double spectre of asexuality and lesbianism.
One example from Women’s History: “…The fear of spinsters and lesbians affected women teachers in Britain between the wars. A 1935 report in a newspaper of an educational conference expressed the threat in extreme terms: ‘The women who have the responsibility of teaching these girls are many of them themselves embittered, sexless or homosexual hoydens who try to mould the girls into their own pattern.’” It was very explicit.
And the whole thing is a common accusation that queer people still face today. That what we are is bad because it is going to destroy children and society.
People at the time felt very strongly about how unnatural it was for people not to have sex. Women, in particular, were often divided into “natural” and “unnatural” – i.e. queer – spinsters. Natural ones were widows; unnatural ones were those we have seen here.
In her book “Family Ties in Victorian England,” Claudia Nelson quotes writer Eliza Linton’s description of “unnatural and alien” spinsters: “Painted and wrinkled, padded and bedizened, with her coarse thoughts, bold words, and leering eyes, [the wrong kind of spinster] has in herself all the disgust which lies around a Bacchante and a Hecate in one…. Such an old maid as this stands as a warning to men and women alike of what and whom to avoid.”
Earlier, during the Victorian era, there was a popular but unsuccessful movement, for decades, pushing to evict spinsters over 30 from Britain, and send them to Canada, Australia, or the United States instead. They were perceived, at best, as “surplus females”, in part because there were many more women than men in the population there at that time.
There was some overlap between the different kinds of queer. Straight people, as a group, had even less understanding and interest then than they do now of what the different flavors of queer might be.
Shannon Jackson’s essay, “Toward a Queer Social Welfare Studies,” gives a good example of how describes how critics of Jane Addams’ Hull-House “called the settlement ‘unnatural,’ worrying that its women were ‘spinsters’ or that its men were ‘mollycoddles’.” In that case, I would guess that they meant “women who have sex with women”.
It’s a good example of how much they conflated the different kinds of queer – that some straight people could use the term to slam people for being asexual, and others could use it to slam people for the opposite. And it’s also a good example of how little they cared which of us they were attacking. The important thing, to them, was that we weren’t having solely hetero sex and living our lives centered around being hetero. Everything else was just details.
(Also FWIW, I want to note that I meant no disrespect to any of the previous commenters or the OP in cutting the previous posts from queerdemonslesbiandoe @punkrcgers and sushi-moss. Tumblr wouldn’t let me post my long-ass reply without trimming; it mysteriously “lost” the whole thing like it always does when I reply at length to a long thread, and I had to rewrite it.)
Also, this is a lot about women, but an unmarried man over a certain age was also considered “a threat to society” (and as mentioned above the term “confirmed bachelor” is still code for gay)
Right? I didn’t know ANYTHING about the Spinster Movement before I read about it yesterday, I didn’t even know that it existed. So I suspect that there are a shit-ton more examples like this. It could fill a really interesting book.
also, u know, so-called corrective rape is a thing that is done to people for not being cishet, including ace people. so like. “ace ppl never experience the kind of abuse “real” queer ppl do” just doesnt work. ok?
if a girl asks you for a tampon, I dont care how much you hate that bitch if you have one you hand it over no one deserves that level of hell
last week i went to the toilet at school while i waited for my friends so we could get the bus home and i changed my pad while i was in there and there were these two years sevens in there who thought the toilet was empty and one of them was like ‘omg my period started idk what to do’ so i came out the toilet and was like ‘do you need a pad?’ and she was like ‘do you have one’ so i was like yeah and i gave it to her and she hugged me. I had never met her before in my life but she hugged me in the school bathroom because i gave her a pad when i am also significantly older than her
give other people pads and tampons because if satan starting coming out of your magic circle you would want one too
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2015: Man-on-man marriage
2017: Man-on-child marriage
2019: Man-on-dog marriage
2021: Man-on-car marriage
2023: Hopefully the world ends by then tbh
Two consenting adults, be they man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, or any other combination not specified by the above, are now granted the right (as they always should have had) to enter a legally binding contract and obtain all its attached benefits.
Children cannot give consent. Children cannot legally sign contracts. Children cannot get married.
Animals cannot give consent. Animals cannot legally sign contracts. Animals cannot get married.
Optimus Prime is a sentient being and leader of the entire Autobot race and I don’t think you have any place telling him who his people can and cannot marry. If he is okay with Rewind and Chromedome or Astoria and Powerglide then you need to step off.
WELL SAID
It’s very easy to make Gracie’s mistake here if you persist in thinking of marriage as “a man and his chosen marriage object” rather than, you know, “two people choosing to marry each other.”
Says something about how some people view heterosexual marriage.
DING DING DING DING DING we have a winner.
None of these people have ever expressed a worry that dogs will start wanting to marry men, or that houseplants will start wanting to marry cars.
This way of thinking only makes sense if your view of straight marriage depends on “man actively choosing, woman passively chosen” and gay marriage only fits into your worldview as the distortion “man actively choosing wrong thing,” as though it’s a Sesame Street comedy sketch with Mr. Noodle trying to marry a pocket watch by mistake, presumably with his pants on his head.
Interestingly enough, I’ve never heard someone warn us about women wanting to marry anything, either.
thank you for that mental image. and yes, this is exactly right. i’ve never seen any anti-marriage assholes talk about what they’re afraid WOMEN will do.
It’s very easy to make Gracie’s mistake here if you persist in thinking of marriage as “a man and his chosen marriage object” rather than, you know, “two people choosing to marry each other.”
This, holy shit, yes. Literally until now I never understood how people couldn’t understand “can’t enter into a legally binding contract” when it came to children, animals, whatever. And now it’s clear as fucking day. And even grosser than I realized.
“But once you’ve mined the earth and milked the service industries, what is there left to frack? Us, that’s what. Heard of Kwasi Kwarteng? He’s a rising star in the Tory party. Always a danger signal, this. To qualify as a rising star in this context you have to make Judge Dredd look like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Kwarteng’s suggestion, which has gone down very well with literally everyone I hate, is that a young person who hasn’t got a job and therefore hasn’t paid any national insurance contributions should get their unemployment benefit in the form of a repayable loan. Even if someone was out of work for the entire seven years between 18 and 25, he says, “the total sum repayable would be £20,475 – considerably less than the tuition fees loan repayable by many of his or her peers”. The clincher, there. You might be unemployed, but think yourself lucky you’re not going to university.”
Photographer Phoo Chan has captured some incredible images of a crow riding on the back of a bald eagle mid-flight. Chan explains that crows are territorial birds who will attack and harass much larger birds who invade their space. In this case, the attack included a slight pause as the crow perched itself on the eagle’s back for a brief mid-air ride.
More of Chan’s wonderful wildlife and bird photography can be seen on his Flickr page.
Planned Parenthood launched the hashtag #BirthControlHelpedMe Monday to show the real impact of birth control. Countless people are participating, sharing the ways access has informed and benefitted their lives. Two tweets even point out how birth control makes better parents.
Keep using #BirthControlHelpedMe to tell us how birth control has contributed to the successes in your life!
Guess what day is the busiest day of the year for animal shelters? July 5th.
Please keep your outdoor pets inside on the 4th of July.
Even if your back yard is secured, that doesn’t help with the stress and anxiety they’ll be going through and some pets escape despite from back yards despite your efforts. Your safest bet is to keep them inside. Spread the word on social media. You might keep a family from being separated. <3
ps: in case u guys didn’t know, this is Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the case that just made gay marriage LEGAL for EVERYBODY IN AMERICA. His husband and partner of 21 years, John Arthur, died of complications from ALS while they were fighting for their home state of Ohio to recognize the validity of their marriage (which took place in Maryland). The Obergefell case centers on Jim’s right to be recognized on his terminally-ill husband’s death certificate. That’s John in the photo. Jim is still carrying it on CNN right now.
If in a gay bar, Closer to Fine. Everyone will probably join in, and a lot of people will cry. Otherwise, Subterranean Homesick Blues, because it relies more on rhythm than notes, and besides, why the hell else have I bothered to memorize those lyrics?
You need to have one karaoke song that you can pull out on demand.
Even if you don’t go out, can’t sing, or hate karaoke - it is a truth universally acknowledged that a young person in possession of working vocal cords must be shoved up on a stage at some point in their life. It’s just a fact. All you can do is be prepared.
The good news is you only need one. After you’ve sung your one song, you can legitimately and graciously refuse to do any more. If people pressure you further, request or demand that, since you’ve already taken your turn, either Person A who obviously loves karaoke and can’t wait to get back up there (there’s always at least one of them, otherwise you wouldn’t be at the karaoke place) or Person B who hasn’t sung yet should go instead.
If you’re shy, you can demur and refuse, but then if the worst happens and you get pressured up there (hopefully not by your friends, but if you’re not old enough to have been on a karaoke outing with colleagues and/or bosses, then you probably will one day) you at least will have something ready and you won’t have that horrid anxiety of trying to mumble along to a song that, it turns out, you only really know the chorus to.
[On that note, don’t do it. Don’t ever get up and sing a song solo that you’re not entirely certain of, from verse to bridge to chorus and back. It happened to me once with “Tiny Dancer” (a drunk friend demanded that I do it; I thought I knew it, but I really only knew the bits that were in the movie Almost Famous so I made a huge hash of it) and it was MORTIFYING.]
If you can sing, don’t get too fancy. Pick something that basically every single place will have - Elvis, Sinatra, Madonna, Abba, that level of universal. (Mine is “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield. Every karaoke place with even a few English-language songs has it.) There’s no point in being able to belt out a rare B-side of Florence + the Machine note-perfectly if only two bars on the planet have it in their repertoire. No-one likes a “but they don’t have my sonnnnnngs!” diva.
If you can’t sing, don’t despair! Spoken-word stuff, stuff that can basically be shouted along to, rap and hip-hop, and growly classic rock songs are your refuge. The thing is that, while very few people can rap well - as in, play with words and produce fresh lyrics on demand - everyone, no matter how shy or white or tone-deaf, can memorize and perform a series of words well enough to sound like they can sing a rap song. I spent two weeks in high school learning “The End of the World As We Know It” by R.E.M. It sounds impressive as hell if you can rattle it all off full-speed, but being able to do so is pretty much just muscle memory.
Suggestions for those who can’t sing: “Mustang Sally” - you can basically just growl this one; “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz; “With a Little Help From My Friends” - easy to get others to come up with you, and if Ringo and Joe Cocker could do it, so can you; “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” or almost anything else by the Arctic Monkeys; “Fever” - this requires the ability to fake confidence, but you can just do the whole thing in an exaggeratedly sexy breathy voice.
If you stammer, go with The Who’s “My Generation” and win the hearts and minds of your audience forever.
Practice that one song until you know it pretty much by heart. Being word-perfect is (obviously) less important than being certain of the melody, the rhythm, and exactly when you’ll be expected to start singing at the beginning of every section. And then, when you’re up on stage, really go for it as much as you can. Boogie a little. Use your hands, or exaggerate your facial expressions to match the lyrics. If you look like you’re having fun, people will forgive any number of mistakes or false notes. If your hands shake, grip the mic with both of them. If you can’t deal with people staring at you, learn the song entirely by heart and just do the whole damn thing with your eyes closed. You’ll do fine!
Again, even if you and your friends are super not into karaoke, I guaran-goddamn-tee you that karaoke will be inflicted upon you at least once. Make like a Girl Scout and be prepared.
Super Opinionated.
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