ThePrettiestOne

katswenski:

More Raccoon Escapades! The thrilling sequel to THIS CLASSIC.

intercedeth:

Source: twitter.com/imransiddiquee

Wish I would’ve gotten to this sooner since it’s late to be posting, but I really love this particular message and the discussion around “being a man” and how it relates to the treatment of women as well as gay men (or anyone else perceived as “less” / equivocated with being undesirably weak)

“Co-opting the language and posture of grievance is how members of a privileged class express their belief that the way they live shouldn’t have to change, that their opponents are hypocrites and perhaps even the real oppressors.”

- The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate by Kyle Wagner on Deadspin (via nickdouglas)

programmerdad:

godlessgirl

“

I asked myself what style we women could have adopted that would have been unmarked, like the men’s. The answer was none. There is no unmarked woman.

There is no woman’s hair style that can be called standard, that says nothing about her. The range of women’s hair styles is staggering, but a woman whose hair has no particular style is perceived as not caring about how she looks, which can disqualify her for many positions, and will subtly diminish her as a person in the eyes of some.

Women must choose between attractive shoes and comfortable shoes. When our group made an unexpected trek, the woman who wore flat, laced shoes arrived first. Last to arrive was the woman in spike heels, shoes in hand and a handful of men around her.

If a woman’s clothing is tight or revealing (in other words, sexy), it sends a message — an intended one of wanting to be attractive, but also a possibly unintended one of availability. If her clothes are not sexy, that too sends a message, lent meaning by the knowledge that they could have been. There are thousands of cosmetic products from which women can choose and myriad ways of applying them. Yet no makeup at all is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them.

Women can’t even fill out a form without telling stories about themselves. Most forms give four titles to choose from. “Mr.” carries no meaning other than that the respondent is male. But a woman who checks “Mrs.” or “Miss” communicates not only whether she has been married but also whether she has conservative tastes in forms of address — and probably other conservative values as well. Checking “Ms.” declines to let on about marriage (checking “Mr.” declines nothing since nothing was asked), but it also marks her as either liberated or rebellious, depending on the observer’s attitudes and assumptions.

I sometimes try to duck these variously marked choices by giving my title as “Dr.” — and in so doing risk marking myself as either uppity (hence sarcastic responses like “Excuse me!”) or an overachiever (hence reactions of congratulatory surprise like “Good for you!”).

All married women’s surnames are marked. If a woman takes her husband’s name, she announces to the world that she is married and has traditional values. To some it will indicate that she is less herself, more identified by her husband’s identity. If she does not take her husband’s name, this too is marked, seen as worthy of comment: she has done something; she has “kept her own name.” A man is never said to have “kept his own name” because it never occurs to anyone that he might have given it up. For him using his own name is unmarked.

A married woman who wants to have her cake and eat it too may use her surname plus his, with or without a hyphen. But this too announces her marital status and often results in a tongue-tying string. In a list (Harvey O’Donovan, Jonathan Feldman, Stephanie Woodbury McGillicutty), the woman’s multiple name stands out. It is marked.

”

- Deborah Tannen, “Marked Women, Unmarked Men”  (via harukimuracallme)

“A male author can write about unlikable male characters. They’re called anti-heroes and it’s called a novel.”

- Gillian Flynn on people calling her writing misogynistic in Glamour magazine, the October 2014 issue. The level of sass and taking no shit from both her and Rosamund Pike-who Flynn interviews in this article-is strong and gives me life. (via samishoward)

peoplemask:

theunitofcaring:

saying “you are a burden on society” is just such a weird framing of priorities

It’s like saying “wow, think how much better gas mileage your car would get if you weren’t sitting in it” or “think how dry that umbrella would be if you weren’t holding it in between you and the rainstorm”.

the things we create? they’re for us. they are meant to carry us. they are meant to protect us. we are meant to hold them up to keep us dry. 

Society is so much more burdened by the people who say that and prevent the creation of humane accommodation for people with disabilities than the actual disabilities.

Not just on a “those people are assholes” level, but on an actual fiscal level. We are wasting money and time and resources because if we provided better and proper services for people it is cheaper to keep people healthy (to whatever level is possible for a given individual) than it is to pay for emergency services once someone is having a crisis because they were unable to access proper care and resources.

Also when my friends with disabilities and chronic illnesses AREN’T fighting insurance to get coverage of the treatments they need, we’re all happier and they have the energy to do some cool shit. (Or they just feel better than they would otherwise, but that’s better for us all than the alternative.)

myjourneymythoughts:

[TW: Talk of sexual assault, physical assault, violence and antiziganism.]

I’ve sat here, combating the ignorance individually. I’m done with that. I’m done trying to reach you on a one on one level. You continuously ignore anything from me, you ignore the people I talk to on here who are Roma. You say we’re “Being too sensitive,” that “Gypsy is just a word,” that it stands for “Being free spirited, moving from place to place,” and the best, “I’m APPRECIATING your culture.”

First, gypsy is a slur. No matter what you think, it has been a slur for centuries.  It’s where the term “gypped" comes from. It was believed that the Roma would rip gadje (non-Roma) off for money. Roma who escaped the fate of death at the hands of the SS and their dogs, the ones who weren’t killed right away, were branded with a "Z", which stood for Zigeuner, the German word for "Gypsy". They were shipped to death camps, where barely any suvived.

It is a slur still used today. Roma are called “Gyppos” while being beaten, forced out of their settlements, forced to move. They are called this when they are assaulted and even raped. They are victims of forced sterilization, forcible eviction of settlements, harassment by both law enforcement and citizens, fingerprinting simply because they are Roma, they are often ecxluded from schools.

I want you to look at this:

This is from 2009. This is a Roma woman being assaulted WHILE CARRYING HER CHILD in Dublin! This is what the word “Gypsy” stands for.

This is Natalka Kudrikova. She is a little girl who was severely burned when antiziganists threw molotov cocktails into her family’s home:

This is also what the word “Gypsy” stands for. This happened in 2010. Systemic violence against a culture, an ethnicity, that just wants to be treated equally, to not have their way of life treated horribly. You can be sure, as these acts were going on, the word “GYPSY!” was being screamed in a way meant to incite fear and terror in those hearing it.

You dress up in flowy clothing, half-naked or naked except for a shawl. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? It contributes to the fetishization and sexualization of the Roma. Women are assaulted physically and sexually, because of this type of thing. They are raped, simply because they are believed to be “Easy” because of these “Positive stereotypes” you’re so quick to buy into.

It’s damaging to the culture when you treat it as a costume. Do you know the meaning behind the long skirts, or the “head scarves” that you’re so fond of donning? Do you know why the Roma wear these? It’s not for fucking fashion.

When you wear these things without a a care, you take away the meaning of these items. You take away the deep cultural roots the have. The skirt is worn because the lower half of the body is traditionally seen as “unclean” due to marime, or the code that’s followed. That “scarf” is known as a diklo, worn by women when they are married.

When you dress like this, you are spitting in the face of that culture, these people that are treated like they’re less than garbage TODAY. Not centuries ago, this is STILL HAPPENING. 

So, before you tag that picture as “Gypsy” or say you want to “Lead a gypsy lifestyle,” look back on this post. Think about what that word means, and what you’re saying. Think about how fucking disrespectful it is. Think about the racism involved with that word. And realize that you are contributing to the ignorance that allows violence like these 2 out of countless incidents that occur. You are turning the Roma into a trope. This positive stereotype allows people to ignore the violence and hatred that Roma are still facing, because everyone thinks that being a “gypsy” is all about freedom, when really, they face oppression daily!

You’re not cool when you do this, you’re contributing to racism and violence.

deathbecomesheather:

somnia-maior:

co-gi-to:

untamedcomets:

This is important

IMPORTANT. BOOST.

teach your sons and daughters not to rape, not to put drugs in drinks, teach them to be nice 

Wow.

thebaconsandwichofregret:

bronzebasilisk:

blu-thoth:

meta-bubbles:

DO NOT GIVE OR GET ANY VACCINATIONS FOR YOURSELF OR  YOUR KIDS………..

Ok, lets break this down nice and simple.

Formaldehyde is from the purification of the vaccine. 99.9% of which is removed. The reason it doesn’t give a dosage is so minuscule that it can’t be measured without going into picograms. That’s one trillionth of a gram. You breathe in more formaldehyde by driving down a busy road than in a vaccine.

Thimerosal is NOT elemental mercury, It is a molecular compound made up of carbon, hydrogen, mercury, sodium, oxygen, and surfer. This is used as a preservative for the vaccine. Thimerosal is used in a variety of other things, like tattoo ink, facial creams, nasal sprays. It’s toxic to humans only in fairly large quantities but highly toxic to aquatic born organisms like infectious bacteria. In short, it makes sure you don’t get salmonella from a stray bacteria from the chicken embryos.

As for the dosage of the Thimerosal. That is the most laughable point in this post. It says 25 mcg, that’s micrograms, or one millionth of a gram. To put this in perspective, a dollar bill weighs roughly 1 gram, the average human eyelash is around 80-90 micrograms. The box also says that it contains a 5ml (milliliter/cc) vial which leads me to my next point.

A little simple math and we find out that 25 mcg = 0.00003 ml and a little more math we find that 0.00003 ml is 0.00006% of 5 ml. Let me put this another way. By the age of 5, an American child weighs about 50-55lbs and their body contains 55 mcg of Uranium. I don’t see any kids running around with radiation sickness, so I think they’re safe with a preservative in them.

TL;DR: This is like saying you don’t want your child eating their baked birthday cake because raw eggs were used to make it and you don’t want your child getting salmonella from it.

THANK YOU

not vaccinating your children is child abuse and it should be illegal.

loki-has-a-tardis:

This is honestly the best poster I have found in a while supporting breast cancer awareness. I am honestly so sick of seeing, “set the tatas free” and “save the boobies”. There is no reason in hell a life threatening, life ruining disease should be sexualized. “Don’t wear a bra day,” go fuck yourselves. You’re not saving a pair of tits, you’re saving the entire package: mind, body, and soul included. Women are not just a pair of breasts.

invisiblelad:

lovelyandbrown:

thisiseverydayracism:

The prison-industrial complex is just a myth…right?

Jesus he didn’t even have us do the damn math. He just said it.

…yeah. I suppose there’s no point in finding flowery rhetoric for it. “Putting people in jail is good for business” is pretty much the size of it. 

Once upon a time, there was a fetching young wolverine who, wearing her favorite red hood, went skipping through the fields, on the way to her grandmother’s house, carrying a basket of tasty goodies.*

A wolf, who was lurking at the edge of the woods, descended upon the young wolverine and said “Hello, little red riding wolverine, and where are you going in such a hurry?”

"To visit my grandmother," said the young wolverine, as demure and maidenly as a gravelly wolverine baritone can be.

"To visit your…to…grand…to..my goodness, what big teeth you have…" said the wolf, who seemed to have lost his train of thought somewhere.

The wolverine nodded.

"And what…big…claws…you have…" said the wolf, in much the same tone as General Custer commenting on the surprising number of locals at Little Bighorn.

The wolverine nodded.

"I’ll just bugger off, shall I?" said the wolf.

The wolverine nodded.

The wolf slunk gratefully back into the trees and hyperventilated quietly, and the little red riding wolverine skipped merrily through the woods to her grandmother’s house and they ate assorted rodents and watched cartoons and baked cookies happily ever after.  - Ursula Vernon

—————————

*Pepperidge Farms’ Mixed Rodent Party Assortment, to be precise, a pretty good value for the money, although everybody always picks through and eats the gerbils first.

jackpowerx:

geekygothgirl:

The original is good, the comment is STUNNING. Love it!

So, basically, this is a symbolic representation of internalized misogyny:

“

Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after “semicolons,” and another one after “now.”

And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man.

”

-

Ursula K. Le Guin on being a man – the finest, sharpest thing I’ve read in ages 

(via ananthymous)

strangelybeautifulworld:

nympherret:

like how much more obvious does this need to be made for people to get it?

this isnt even an exaggeration 

like at all

thetinkertoyboy:

rudimentree:

ramblingferret:

sizvideos:

Penn and Teller on Vaccinations - Video

And even if that Autism thing was true (WHich it fucking isn’t) your kid is still safe from these diseases.

What’s fucking worse? You saying you’d rather have dead kid then and Autistic one? Seriously Anti-vaxxers need to banished to the moon something.

preach it

This is also why shit like Autism Speaks is fucking terrible.

People are so terrified of autism due to their campaigning that they’re willing to put LIVES at risk to avoid a child who has it.

Without that fear, the anti-vaccination campaign would have never taken off.

“I was the first female captain to walk onto the bridge of a starship and issue the signature command, “Engage.” I was also the first captain to have more than seven hairdos within a season, a corset sewn into her space suit, and a bra that resembled an alien species. I was puffed and shorn and stuffed and lit and scrutinized by every executive on the lot. I was criticized and cajoled, alternatively patronized and petted. It’s as if they had all gone out of their way to find this exotic animal who could, in fact, walk and talk and act at the same time, and yet when she appeared on deck, they were stunned to discover that under that feline coat was, God help us, a feline.”

- "The Influence of Captain Janeway" by Kate Mulgrew (Foreward to Homer Simpson Marches on Washington: Dissent through American Popular Culture, 2010)

I understand that you think I acted too emotionally. Putting aside the fact that men always say that about women they work with, I’ll get straight to the point: I am emotional. I do bring it into my work. It’s what motivates me. It’s what helps me get into the headspace of our victims, see what they’ve seen, even if I don’t want to, even if it horrifies me. And I think it makes me a better agent. If you have a problem with that, I’m sorry. You can fire me. But I hope you don’t.

Heavenly Nostrils by Dana Simpson for October 17, 2014

A tiny gray arctic fox nibbles on a man’s flip-flop exposed toes in absolute delight. While it may be unclear if the baby vulpine was seriously setting to eat the man feet first or just wanted to play around, the efforts put forth are absolutely adorable.

via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

gothiccharmschool:

brainvomit:

In case you didn’t know, October is learning disability awareness month! Also, you probably didn’t know I have one, since the general reaction I tend to get is “you don’t /look/ like you have a learning disability”.

That’s partially why I made this, because people seem to think you’re branded with it on your forhead when in real life it’s not like that at all—In fact, that mentality is probably what hurt my academic career for so long, because people with Dyscalculia often excel in other areas! I remember a lot if teachers/classmates/my own parents telling me to ‘just try harder’, because to them it seemed like I wasn’t applying myself. Dyscalculia is also not a ‘popular’ learning disability that’s talked about, it’s a pretty common occurance for me to have to give an explanation to others who think I’m ‘lazy’, so I figured this is a little educational as well as personal.

Those with Dyscalculia have trouble with*:

•Counting, estimating, and measuring. •Learning math facts (like addition, subtraction, multiplication, ect). •Problem-solving skills. •Concepts of time and navigation (scheduling, telling the diffrence between directions). *Among other things, but those are the most common.

●Here are some Dyscalculia resources:
•Learning Disability Association of America- [ldaamerica.org/types-of-learning-disabilities/dyscalculia]
•National Center for Learning Disabilities- [ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/dyscalculia/what-is-dyscalculia]
•Dyscalculia.Org

●Think you have Dyscalculia? Test yourself (Don’t self-diagnose, bring your results to your parent/school counselor/therapist and discuss further testing)
•[cohenkadosh.psy.ox.ac.uk/test-yourself/are-you-dyscalculic]

I did not know that Dyscalculia was a diagnosis that existed until a few years ago. Once I knew, it felt like I was aiming a flashlight back at my school career, finally able to see some things clearly. Ask me to read a novel and write a term paper overnight? Sure, no problem. Ask me to do a times table? Blind, near-sobbing panic. 

Even now, if I have to do basic multiplication, if it’s not something that had a song from Schoolhouse Rock, I … I’m not sure I can do it.

“Emulsifier” is a hand-painted glass sculpture by Austria-based artist Thomas Medicus, that, depending on the viewing angle, displays four different illustrations. The sculpture is displayed on a rotating base, which causes each illustration to slowly appear and disappear in an endless loop.

photos via Thomas Medicus, GIF via Colossal

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

“The story of Cassandra, the woman who told the truth but was not believed, is not nearly as embedded in our culture as that of the Boy Who Cried Wolf—that is, the boy who was believed the first few times he told the same lie. Perhaps it should be.”

- In her cover essay on silencing women in the October 2014 issue of Harper’s, Rebecca Solnit once again proves that she is one of our era’s greatest essayist – further evidence here and here. (via explore-blog)

castielsteenwolf:

pr1nceshawn:

The evolution of Halloween costumes for girls…

this is really important

This is why I get upset about the sexy costumes at Halloween.  Not because you don’t have the right to be sexy—you absolutely, absolutely do.  But because while you might be able to find costume #3 in a tween size in each of these rows, I can guarantee that in almost all cases, you will not find costume #2 in a teen or adult size.

Babies/toddlers get to be cute.  Kids/tweens get to be fun and spooky and still have modesty, if they want it.  Teens who aren’t on the small end are already getting the sexy, even if they really just want fun, spooky, and a skirt that goes below mid-thigh.  And adults?  LOL nope it’s sexy or nothing.

Everyone who is of an age to want sexy should be allowed to have sexy.  But “not sexy” should always be on the table as well, because sometimes you just want to be warm and cozy and filling a pillowcase with strangercandy.

dollsahoy:

hvashi:

Baby Opossum

BIBBY POSSUMS!