sordidmarigolds:

its fucking 2014 can we stop pretending that friendships and other non-romantic or non-sexual relationships can’t be abusive

friends can abuse, isolate, and manipulate you

friends can physically and mentally abuse you

abuse by a friend is no less traumatic than abuse by an intimate partner

i’m mad i even have to say this tbqh

“We never say that all men deserve to feel beautiful. We never say that each man is beautiful in his own way. We don’t have huge campaigns aimed at young boys trying to convince them that they’re attractive, probably because we very rarely correlate a man’s worth with his appearance. The problem is that a woman’s value in this world is still very much attached to her appearance, and telling her that she should or deserves to feel beautiful does more to promote that than negate it. Telling women that they “deserve” to feel pretty plays right in to the idea that prettiness should be important to them. And having books and movies aimed at young women where every female protagonist turns out to be beautiful (whereas many of the antagonists are described in much less flattering terms) reinforces the message that beauty has some kind of morality attached to it, and that all heroines are somehow pretty.”

-

You Don’t Have To Be Pretty – On YA Fiction And Beauty As A Priority | The Belle Jar (via brutereason)

And that’s fantastic…if you’re white. Please keep that in mind when you read this and nod along. Rejecting “pretty” as something with low value when your hair, your skin, your eye color and your features have been upheld for ages - that’s something that you get to do.

But please don’t try to force Black women to adhere to it. We need to be beautiful. We need to be delicate, dainty, ethereal, lovely. We need to be statuesque, we need to be glorious, we need to glow with health and vibrancy. We need to be beautiful.

There’s a reason why we post things like “All little Black girls are amazing.” It’s because we finally get to say it, and we get to say it to the Black women and girls who have been separated from us. That’s why we say “All Black women are beautiful.” We are telling each other. We are spreading the message to each other.

Because for ages, we have been seen as having low value. For ages, we have only been seen as beautiful when we’re born with features that reflect whiteness - lighter skin, loose curls, narrow noses, thin lips, light eyes. And when something about us is beautiful, it’s only saluted when it’s on a pale woman. Our beauty is devalued unless it’s on a pale woman.

So I’m here for the beautiful black heroine with their regal cloudlike hair and their deep, glowing brown skin and the rounded beauty of her cheeks and lips and hips and breasts. I want to see the black woman in front of her mirror, taking off her wig. I’m going to nod and whisper "yes, it’s true" when I see a post on my dash that says “Black Girls Are Beautiful.” I’m going to reblog beautiful Black women on my dash because they are beautiful Black women. We deserve to feel pretty. We are pretty. Don’t take that away from us because it’s something you feel you don’t need any more. that’s fine for you.

We’re still on that stage.

So if you see a message like that, do me a favor. Don’t append with “don’t you mean all women are beautiful?” just whisper “Yes, it’s true.” and leave it at that. 

Little Black girls are amazing.

Black women are beautiful.

Yes, it’s true.

(via ceeainthereforthat)

iwriteaboutfeminism:

Activists react to Governor Nixon declaring a state of emergency.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2

Monday, November 17th

camwyn:

lazyevaluationranch:

9/13 They’re such lovely creatures, you’d never guess they spend most of their time trying to hump confused and disturbed chickens twice their size.

Still picking apples.

Ducks are birds. Birds are late-model dinosaurs.

I am not sure which I find more enthralling, the image of a predatory theropod covered in that gorgeous bluegreenblack feather color, or the image of the world’s most confused other predatory theropod trying to figure out why one of the Nanotyrannus herd from over the hill is trying to get jiggy with them.

tamorapierce:

arwenface:

Thissssss.

This.

sexhaver:

nine out of ten dentists recommend Colgate. the last one won’t stop recommending “the flesh of the innocent” and “thousands and thousands of skulls, staring, judging” and quite frankly we aren’t sure if he’s a real dentist or not

summonbolt:

misandry-mermaid:

revolutionary-afrolatino:

Student Suspended for Speaking Native American Language

When Miranda was teaching a classmate to say “posoh” and “ketapanen” on January 19, her teacher scolded her. Native News Network reported her saying “You are not to speak like that! How do I know you’re not saying something bad? How would you like it if I spoke in Polish and you didn’t understand?”

The words Miranda was chastised for translate to “hello” and “I love you” in Menominee.

And THIS shows you why most Native American languages are either extinct or endangered.

#this is why you dont get to wear a headdress hipsters

deadjosey:

hellajalexboobiesandgoodvibes:

Please, help stop biphobia. It’s hurtful and ignorant.

love this.

I don’t even understand how biphobia can happen.  Once we have gone beyond cisgenders, isn’t anything right and equal?  That’s how it seems to me.

chewiesmiles:

via Mike Brown: Facts and dog whistles by Jonathan Korman (@miniver)

socialjusticekoolaid:

State Of Emergency, Pt 1 (11/17/14): Twitter reacts to the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, declaring a state emergency in anticipation of the grand jury announcement for Darren Wilson. The National Guard of Missouri has been activated and will be on the ground in St Louis, ready to mobilize against protesters at a moment’s notice. This is oppression in action, but we will not be scared away. Demand justice in Ferguson. #staywoke #farfromover

“

So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X’s message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn’t that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn’t accomplished anything as Dr. King had.

I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his “I have a dream speech.”

Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished. He gave this great speech. Or some people say, “he marched.” I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.

At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn’t that he “marched” or gave a great speech.

My father told me with a sort of cold fury, “Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south.”

Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don’t know what my father was talking about.

But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.

He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.

I’m guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing The Help, may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the midwest and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.

It wasn’t that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn’t sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement used to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth’s.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.

White people also occasionally tried black people, especially black men, for crimes for which they could not conceivably be guilty. With the willing participation of white women, they often accused black men of “assault,” which could be anything from rape to not taking off one’s hat, to “reckless eyeballing.”

This is going to sound awful and perhaps a stain on my late father’s memory, but when I was little, before the civil rights movement, my father taught me many, many humiliating practices in order to prevent the random, terroristic, berserk behavior of white people. The one I remember most is that when walking down the street in New York City side by side, hand in hand with my hero-father, if a white woman approached on the same sidewalk, I was to take off my hat and walk behind my father, because he had been taught in the south that black males for some reason were supposed to walk single file in the presence of any white lady.

This was just one of many humiliating practices we were taught to prevent white people from going berserk.

I remember a huge family reunion one August with my aunts and uncles and cousins gathered around my grandparents’ vast breakfast table laden with food from the farm, and the state troopers drove up to the house with a car full of rifles and shotguns, and everyone went kind of weirdly blank. They put on the masks that black people used back then to not provoke white berserkness. My strong, valiant, self-educated, articulate uncles, whom I adored, became shuffling, Step-N-Fetchits to avoid provoking the white men. Fortunately the troopers were only looking for an escaped convict. Afterward, the women, my aunts, were furious at the humiliating performance of the men, and said so, something that even a child could understand.

This is the climate of fear that Dr. King ended.

If you didn’t get taught such things, let alone experience them, I caution you against invoking the memory of Dr. King as though he belongs exclusively to you and not primarily to African Americans.

The question is, how did Dr. King do this—and of course, he didn’t do it alone.

(Of all the other civil rights leaders who helped Dr. King end this reign of terror, I think the most under appreciated is James Farmer, who founded the Congress of Racial Equality and was a leader of nonviolent resistance, and taught the practices of nonviolent resistance.)

So what did they do?

They told us: Whatever you are most afraid of doing vis-a-vis white people, go do it. Go ahead down to city hall and try to register to vote, even if they say no, even if they take your name down.

Go ahead sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed.

If we do it all together, we’ll be okay.

They made black people experience the worst of the worst, collectively, that white people could dish out, and discover that it wasn’t that bad. They taught black people how to take a beating—from the southern cops, from police dogs, from fire department hoses. They actually coached young people how to crouch, cover their heads with their arms and take the beating. They taught people how to go to jail, which terrified most decent people.

And you know what? The worst of the worst, wasn’t that bad.

Once people had been beaten, had dogs sicced on them, had fire hoses sprayed on them, and been thrown in jail, you know what happened?

These magnificent young black people began singing freedom songs in jail.

That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song. The jailers knew they had lost when they beat the crap out of these young Negroes and the jailed, beaten young people began to sing joyously, first in one town then in another. This is what the writer, James Baldwin, captured like no other writer of the era.

Please let this sink in. It wasn’t marches or speeches. It was taking a severe beating, surviving and realizing that our fears were mostly illusory and that we were free.

”

-

Daily Kos :: Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did 

Reblogging this so I can come back to it in the spring when I teach the Civil Rights Movement to my 5th graders. 

(via copperoranges)

Reblogging this for all the non-black people who like to quote MLK like he’s theirs.

(via heathenist)

Let’s not forget the rape of Black women by White men as another terror tactic used in the South.

(via eshusplayground)

Every fall I buy a large number of pumpkins and then disembowel them to make delicious pies and...

“You don’t like his politics, nor should you. But this is not solely about politics and never has been. This is personal. You don’t like him. Your reasons for that antipathy have never been definitively defined — at least, not by you — but its existence can no longer be denied, not after all you’ve done to make it plain.
 
You’ve refused to accept the legitimacy of his presidency, though he was twice elected without Supreme Court help. You’ve supported false theories of foreign birth. You’ve damaged the nation’s credit rating rather than pass a routine authorization. You’ve killed your own legislation when you learned that he supported it. You’ve made compromise a curse word. You’ve raised obstruction to high art and made getting nothing done a badge of perverse honor.
 
Yet, you haven’t managed to get rid of him. What’s left except the ultimate sanction? So for yourself and for the rest of us, please put up or shut up:
 
Impeach President Obama.
 
Show America what you’re made of. Yet again.”

-

Dear Republican Party:

Impeach President Obama.

Go ahead, you know you want to do it. The very thought makes you warm and gooey inside.

factsinallcaps:

HARRIET TUBMAN ESCAPED FROM SLAVERY AND THEN WENT BACK TO GET OTHERS. LIKE, I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO HARRIET TUBMAN IS AND THAT SHE DID THAT, BUT I JUST WANT YOU TO TAKE THAT IN FOR A SECOND. 

HARRIET TUBMAN WAS HELD CAPTIVE AND BOUND TO UNPAID, BACK-BREAKING LABOR SINCE BIRTH UNDER PENALTY OF TORTURE OR DEATH. SHE MANAGED TO ESCAPE THAT LIFE, AND SHE TURNED THE FUCK AROUND AND WENT THE FUCK BACK TO GET EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS STILL TRAPPED IN IT. AND THEN SHE DID IT AGAIN EIGHTEEN MORE TIMES.

WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS UNSURE WHETHER OR NOT HE WAS PREPARED TO MAKE A STAND AGAINST SLAVERY, HARRIET TUBMAN BASICALLY SAID HE SHOULD STOP BEING SUCH A DIAPER BABY AND THAT GUYS WHO ARE TOO SCARED TO END SLAVERY DON’T DESERVE TO WIN WARS.

NOT ONLY DID SHE SECRET OVER 300 SLAVES TO FREEDOM ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, BUT SHE ACTED AS A SPY FOR THE UNION ARMY DURING THE CIVIL WAR, AND BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD AN ARMED ASSAULT IN THE CIVIL WAR. THAT RAID BROUGHT FREEDOM TO OVER 700 SLAVES IN ONE GO.

SO I JUST WANT YOU TO STEW ON THAT FOR LIKE A MINUTE. ACTING IN THE SHADOWS, SHE WALKED INTO HELL ON EARTH 19 TIMES TO SAVE HER FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS FROM THE TORMENT SHE ENDURED, AND THE SECOND SHE WAS GIVEN EVEN A MODICUM OF POWER, SHE MANAGED TO FREE SEVEN HUNDRED SLAVES IN ONE DAY. 

I GUARANTEE, HOWEVER IMPRESSED YOU ALREADY ARE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN, YOU ARE FALLING LIKE AT LEAST 40% SHORT OF HOW IMPRESSED YOU SHOULD BE WITH HARRIET TUBMAN. SHE IS ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES OF BADASSERY IN THE ENTIRETY OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

drst:

thedatingfeminist:

dek-says-so:

abbyjean:

Charts from OKCupid, showing how straight women and men rate each other based on ages. For women, the men they find most attractive are roughly their own age. For men, the women they find most attractive are roughly the same age - 20 to 23 - regardless of the age of the man. (538)

Good fucking Christ.

Oh yay, I was going to make a blog post on this and now I don’t have to! Here’s more info.

Gosh its almost like there’s a massive cultural force telling men that there is a single ideal way for women to look while there is no counterpart ideal for men.

land-of-propaganda:

#Ferguson #MikeBrown

Homeland Security in Ferguson.

(11/16)

Why Political Correctness Is Actually Great for America, According to Science:

sociolab:

shmurdamagicalgirl:

Next time someone tells you to check your privilege, do it. Not only will it improve your perspective on life, but according to new research, it’ll make you more creative, too.

In a recent study, researchers from Cornell University found that political correctness — the avoidance of offensive remarks or words chided by some as social censorship — prompts discussion and ideas far more than it hinders them.

Oh wow when you think about what you say and try not to be an ass, creativity flourishes
Thanks science

Don’t forget!  It’s good for the economy.

gameraboy:

first time is always awkward XD by nebezial

Gotta watch out with aliens!

zuky:

thesmithian:

…[some] may not remember what made Iran-Contra such an extraordinary scandal. The Reagan administration “raised money privately” by selling weapons to a sworn enemy of the United States. Why? Because it wanted to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. And when I say “illegal war,” I mean that quite literally—Congress told the Reagan administration, in no uncertain terms, that Reagan could not send money to the Contras. Period. The Reagan administration, unrestrained by laws and the Constitution, did so anyway, and much of the president’s national security team ended up under indictment.

more.

Reagan knew everything. However, I bet this Time magazine piece doesn’t get into the juiciest part of Iran-Contra, which is that in the 1980s the CIA put into operation a crack cocaine pipeline to import narcotics from Central and South America and distribute it in US inner cities. This is not a “conspiracy theory”, this is a documented conspiracy, most rigorously researched and reported by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gary Webb, whose series in the San Jose Mercury News and subsequent book “Dark Alliance” literally got him killed. To me, that’s the story of Iran-Contra: not that Reagan sold weapons to Iran, but that the US government imported and sold crack to Black America, as part of an arms and drugs trade which funded war in the Third World and which devastated lives and filled prisons in the USA.

Ana Kasparian of the Young Turks weighed in on That Evil Shirt, and she got everything wrong: she ranted about feminist extremists, and how you’d have to be really weak to give up on science because of one shirt — it was an embarrassing exhibition of non sequiturs. I was disgusted, and would have let it go, but a youtube commenter (!) named florzinnha3 did an excellent job answering it, so I thought I’d just steal her comment and post it here.

Oh Ana, sometimes you are so disappointing.

If a woman says it doesn’t offend her people say “see? It’s not sexist!”.

If a woman says it offends her then she’s admitting she’s “weak”.

No-win.

It’s a ridiculous simplification to think a woman would say “a shirt kept me from my life’s dream of being an engineer!!” .

Literally no woman would say this. No woman.

That is a ridiculous strawman.

That shirt is a representation of the “boys club” environment of the STEM fields.
A “boys club” systematically and by definition keeps women out. This is done by both large and overt attacks, as well as subtle even unintentional actions. This is simple sociology.

The STEM fields are dominated by men, with few women. Which is why that sexist shirt resonated with a lot of women because it is a clear example of the little things that tell women, each day, in STEM and other male-dominated fields, “this is a boys’ club, you’re not welcome”.

It’s not rocket science, Ana. 

I do have to add one more thing: these idiots raving about “feminist extremists — they’ve gone too far!” Let me ask you: what did people do in response to Taylor’s shirt?

Did they riot in the streets?

Did they demand that he be fired?

Did someone shoot him?

Did swarms of people send him messages telling him he should die, he should be raped?

No, they did none of those things. They complained. They spoke out and said the shirt was tasteless and disrespectful to the women on the team and in the audience. That’s all. They just spoke up, nothing more.

But apparently that’s just too much radicalism. The only thing less anyone could do is sit silent…but I guess that’s what’s wanted of women.

It really reminds me of all those complaints about “radical” and “militant” atheists whose most terrible act was writing a book or giving a speech.

scoregasm:

leela-summers:

For any non-Aussies out there, Karl Stefanovic is a pretty beloved TV presenter on the morning show “Today”. He’s created many hilarious TV moments like eating the world’s hottest pie, losing his shit over grumpy cat, the conversation about the long stabby thing - and there was also that time where he told a bad pun Dalai Llama joke TO the Dalai Llama. 

Well today he revealed that (as a comment on sexism in the media) he has been wearing the same suit on air every day for a year with nobody noticing. He started doing it deliberately after seeing the backlash that his female co-hosts would constantly get over their appearances. 

"No one has noticed; no one gives a shit. But women, they wear the wrong colour and they get pulled up. They say the wrong thing and there’s thousands of tweets written about them. Women are judged much more harshly and keenly for what they do, what they say and what they wear… I’ve worn the same suit on air for a year - except for a couple of times because of circumstance - to make a point. I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humour - on how I do my job, basically. Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is." -Karl Stefanovic

Karl is a treasure.

http://www.steampunktendencies.com/


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http://www.steampunktendencies.com/


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http://www.steampunktendencies.com/

Mechanical Wolf by Andrew Chase

passinnotesinsecrecy:

IT WAS THE ERA THINGS CHANGED. CAN YOU SEE IT NOW????

the-goddamazon:

I want to tape this to so many people’s foreheads.

Grace’s favourite tip for travel (x)

Is Complimenting a Woman Sexual Harassment?-Feminist Fridays

thefeministkilljoy:

darksomeness:

kissing-whiskey:

thatseanguyblogs:

yourladydisdain:

hipstermoriarty:

mockeryd:

killbenedictcumberbatch:

peopleasproducts:

Sexism 60’s

jesus???????????????

What the fuck was wrong with men in the 60’s?

advertising is important as it’s the historian’s best resource for identifying the values of an era. but yeah, these were fucked. the 60s was generally as fucked as the 50s. people forget that. 

It literally says ‘men are better than women’ in bold type, what the fuck. I knew this was a thing, but that is a lack of subtlety I couldn’t have written into a spoof…

This is the generation that spawned most of our parents… People our parents’ age run Washington. Starting to make sense?

When you look to the past, the struggles of the present become a great deal more clear.

Hey Everyone, just an FYI…. This is not over. This is not exclusive to “our parents generation”

Oh hey look, a Hardee’s ad

i literally said ‘fuck you’ about ten times as i looked over the modern ads

I don’t understand why people are finding this surprising? Like literally look at ANY advert and it will be sexist as fuck.