inject the contents of this bin directly into my veins

I need to know

has anyone ever tried to pee in one of these

Even when you are legitimately suffering, it is your responsibility not to be cruel to people who haven’t harmed you. When you are miserable and feel like lashing out, it’s your responsibility to control that impulse and to apologize when you fail to control that impulse.

Sometimes people think their suffering gives them the right to be as vicious as they like, and that viciousness often lands on the very people trying to offer them support and care. Someone who cares about you and who is trying to support you isn’t there to be your verbal (or physical) punching bag.

There’s a difference between consensual support – sharing your feelings with someone who has agreed to listen – and taking out those feelings on someone by saying cruel things to them, hurting them physically, or making them feel bad intentionally to excise your own feelings.

If you are the person offering care to someone who is suffering, you are not required to accept cruelty in order to offer support. You are entitled to set boundaries that keep you from being hurt – even when the other person is also legitimately hurting.

Sometimes people who are suffering get overwhelmed and lash out, because it can be hard to think of others sometimes when your own pain is great. But if and when this happens, it needs to be acknowledged and apologized for, and the person who did it needs to figure out how to stop themselves from behaving like this in the future. The person who was lashed out at is also entitled to their own feelings about what happened; no one’s required to excuse or ignore their pain just because it was inflicted on impulse or by someone else who was in pain.

No one gets a pass on harming whoever’s nearest just because they themselves have been harmed.  If someone is consistently treating you with respect, it’s not acceptable to force them to bear the brunt of pain you received somewhere else. Find other ways to handle overwhelming feelings.

a society that allows people to starve when there is food has failed. like. that’s it.

People arguing with this saying, “why do people deserve food for free???” is honestly just further proof of the failure. 

Over Sensitive & Easily Offended

This line is a favorite of the bigot. The problem is, it’s backwards.

It’s a great trick. It works because it’s a simple dismissal. If it’s you who are “Sensitive” or “Easily offended,” they are cleared of all wrong doing. Not only are they cleared of all wrong doing but they also become the victim in the situation because the implication of being “Sensitive” also places a false accusation on the bigot. At least, that’s the way it normally plays out.

The reality is the direct opposite.

For a person to say or do something offensive and then have that thing pointed out, puts them, the bigot in a place of “Sensitivity.” Confused? I’ll explain….

If you were to make a racial slur and I were to get upset about said slur, it would be you, not me who would need to change. The “Sensitivity” that is spoken of lay completely in the hands of the person who would need to make effort. If I am somehow incorrect in my anger or hurt over this slur, then I am just wrong. Nothing more. If you are wrong because you said something racist, it is you and only you who would be required to admit you’re wrong, apologize for your wrong and change your wrong. If I am incorrect, nothing happens. If you are incorrect, you have to change.

The “Easily offended” is that of the person who does harm and refuses to correct it. It is the bigot who is “Easily offended” because it is the bigot who would be forced to make some sort of change in their person if they are wrong. 

Being “Over sensitive” and “Easily offended” is to be angry at the thought that YOU might have to change your words, actions and/or thought process. It is you who are to sensitive. It is you who are so easily offended that you run behind “Freedom of Speech” in order to hide from human decency. Those that hold legal rights above human rights are weak willed and have a weak constitution. 

Inciting anger and pain is the easiest thing on Earth to do. Anyone of any intellect, in any tax bracket, on any logical plane is able to incite anger and pain. It’s the opposite that takes actual humanity, intellect, patience and strength. Causing pain is a sign of weakness. Weakness is nothing more than your own sensitivity to the fact that you are weak. 

-Barbara Ehrenreich, in “Made to Order”, an essay in the anthology Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, co-edited with Arlie Russell Hochschild. 

Relevant to an argument I just had on Twitter about “disruptive” protest at Walmart in supposed solidarity with the Black Friday strikes. Picket, protest, march and rally all you want, hold a sit-in, but please, before you do things like deliberately create a mess in the store or leave a full cart in the checkout line, consider who’s going to have to clean up the mess that you make. It’s not going to be Rob Walton or any of the other multibillionaires. It won’t even be the assistant manager. It’ll be the same low-wage worker who maybe wanted to go on strike but wasn’t quite convinced, or who was threatened by their boss, who’s working an extra-long shift on the worst shopping day of the year. 

Solidarity doesn’t mean you decide for yourself what is best for the workers. It means showing up in the ways they need and want you to and letting them decide how to build worker power. 

(via champagnecandy)

TRUTH.

(via circlesoffire)

looking at you, smug atheists who move Bibles to the fiction shelves in bookstores so you can brag about it on the internet.

(via commanderbishoujo)

Angela Davis, Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex (via zeram)

What the... Is that a word?: The myths behind word usage and "correctness"

By Adrian Bauza

Recently, I had a discussion with a popular blogger who is fascinated with obscure and charming words. Given their fascination with such subject, I though they’d be open-minded when it comes to actually using any given word, especially made-up words, in creative and even formal communication.

Sadly, I was wrong. The answers given to my inquiries were full of contradictions and animosity, overall adherence to the establishment and rejection of linguistic reasoning. 

The situation left me thinking about my positions, which ultimately led to the simpler, unsolved questions of linguistics: What is the original purpose of language? How did language arise? And most importantly for the case: is there a universal definition of what a word is? This leading to two further questions: When it’s a word acceptable to be used in X context and what determines its “acceptability”?

I thought about it for days and determined that there’s no simple and/or objective answer to said question, and probably we’ll never answer it, so it’s up to us. 

Language is not a static thing. Language is not what resides within textbooks or the rules made by an academy (basically, a group of individuals who speak and write alike. Language is not what you learned from Kindergarten through your senior year of HS. Language is not what you’re learning in your Creative Writing or English classes (or any other language classes). Language is a living thing developed by people from the dawn of their existence, and the same way it developed since then is still valid and in use. It evolves by use; speaking, writing, and use involves breaking the so-called rules.

How many times have you heard the phrase “that’s not a word” or “that’s incorrect” (regarding language use)? If you went through school, I can assure you’ve heard it by the hundreds (albeit not always referring to you), and if you’re in college or you’re a college graduate, said count goes up exponentially, especially if your field is related to writing. What people don’t realise when uttering such affirmation is how wrong they are.

The origin of language has been dubbed by some as “the hardest problem in science”. The initial purpose of language isn’t clear either. Today we use it for communication among the human species, but, what if language arose at first as some kind of mimicry? What if its focus was local or familial instead of communal or global? Language isn’t something that fossilises, so, unless ancient peoples had a way to record themselves, we’ll never know how they spoke, but of one thing we’re 100% sure: Language changes.

The first account of written language dates back to circa 2900 BC, Sumerian cuneiform characters. Written Old English dates back to 650 AD, Middle English to 1066 and the earliest form of what we know as Modern English dates back to 1470, barely 542 years of history. Words have changed, some got into daily use and some were dropped out. Some were borrowed from other languages, some got shortened, others hyper-corrected. Vowels have shifted, “ain’t” came into use, “bain’t” fell into desuetude, “Google”, “Twitter”, “Tumblr” and many other are now everyday words with verbal forms… Then, who are you to say what is and what is not a word?

What makes a word usable? Let’s bust some myths and address misconceptions most people seem to have about language. 

Play by your own prescriptivist rules for a little and look at the dictionary. What’s the definition of word? Here are the first two definitions that pop-up on Google Dictionary:

Given that the universal definition of what a word is is still debated and considered another unsolved problem in linguistics, for practical purposes, let’s say a word is just that, the smallest element that can be used in isolation, conveying pragmatic or semantic meaning. Whatever you utter that conveys a meaning, even if you’re the only one who knows it at the moment is, by definition, a word. 

Let’s get things straight. Language is not what it’s written on a dictionary or the rules imposed by some standard. Language is a living thing. The criteria for introduction on a dictionary is, mainly, widespread usage. If a word becomes a word only when it gets into the dictionary, then, does that mean that “cassette tape”, “aerodrome” and “VJ” (video-jockey) are no longer valid words? Some (concise, not historic) dictionaries drop words as they become obsolete, but those utterances once were widespread enough to get published. “Mwahaha” got into the OED, “brabble” was dropped. A dictionary is, by no means, a reference on the “correctness” of a word.

At first, this seems like a valid point, as it’s hard to communicate when only you know what you’re saying, yet it’s still not valid. I’ll tell you why. 

All words were once made-up words. Let’s oversimplify things for the sake of easy understanding. The first utterance by one of our ancestors was probably not understood by many (or by no one), yet it still developed and its meaning, whatever it was, became widespread. As words started to arise, new concepts entered the knowledge and vocabulary of the people. Those utterances changed over time and ultimately became the words we all use today.

Some words become others by compounding, inflection and many other ways. They even change meanings radically by a process called semantic change. Take for example the word “awful”, which used to mean “wondrous/inspiring wonder” (full of awe) and contrast it with modern usage. See? Those words you take for granted once were very different, and, at some point, only existed inside the mind of the first person who uttered them.

A word is no less of a word because it’s made-up. Shakespeare, during his lifetime, coined thousand of expressions and words with no clear etymology. The guy made up words by the thousands, thus setting the basis of what we now know as Modern English. We use English the way we use it now thanks to him and his colossal imagination. If you use words like “bedazzled”, “obscene” and “luggage” and support the “that’s a made-up word, thus not a word”, you better shut the fuck up. 

When they use this argument, basically, you’re being belittled because you haven’t written and published hundreds of works and set the basis of modern language. Hah! Yes, you’re not Shakespeare, but you’re no less (or no more) creative than him unless you’ve exercised your creative abilities enough to know and push your limits. If you come up with a word, that’s a word, and there’s nothing that prohibits you from making it big.

Words like “muggle” and “mudblood” were once of unknown meaning, and, nowadays, even people outside the Harry Potter fandom know the meaning of these terms. J.K. Rowling started writing ideas for the series on napkins, and now look where she’s at and how far her stories have gone. Who says you can’t?

That’s a real concern. There are books that you can’t read without having a dictionary available at all times, imagine when it comes to made-up words! While it’s true that made-up words are harder to use and harder to be understood because, well, nobody but you knows them yet, many things can make the use of such words viable. 

I once wrote a short story in which one of the characters has a bad case of scoliosis. The fact is known from the start of it and it’s mentioned and described multiple times. This is a small excerpt of one paragraph:

“Colubrious” isn’t a word you’ll find in a dictionary, and if you google it you’ll find mostly nothing about it. I made it up. It comes from the Latin word “coluber”, snake, and to me, it means snake-like. Now, be honest, if you knew said character has scoliosis, isn’t the context enough to infer the meaning of it? Voilà! Now you know another (made-up) new word! Use it and spread it if you like it, that’s how words become known.

It works a little differently for other words. Let’s take for example the famous “sonder”, coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Here’s its definition:

n. the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Now that’s a hard word to use with a complex definition. Is it a word? Yes, definitely. Is it’s use appropriate? Hell yes. Is it usable? Hardly, but yes.

Let’s suppose you use it. You wrote “That afternoon, I got sonder.” How do you make your readers aware of its meaning? Simple, there are many ways to do so. You can add a glossary at the end of your book, you can make a call to a footnote where its meaning is explained, you can enrich the paragraph making its meaning inferable by context. I already gave you three options, there are thousands. It’s up to you to experiment. 

At times, you could leave words undefined for artistic purposes. That’s fine. Is that kind of word less of a word because its creator imbued it with no definite meaning? Nope. As long as it has the potential to stand for something, it’s a word, even if it has a different meaning in every idiolect.

Yes and no. Mostly no. Ask a poli-sci major how many times they’ve used the terms “blue/red/swing state” academically. Well, before the 2000 election, they meant nothing. Terms and words are being coined every day, if you fail to see that, then I’ll assume you live in a cave.

The word “meme”, which is known all over the internet, is a term invented by Richard Dawkins in 1976 for his book “The Selfish Gene”. It’s defined as a behaviour that spreads from person to person within a culture. The word may have a Greek root, but it’s a made-up word in every sense. It’s not only published, but used in serious scientific studies on the fields of biology and anthropology. 

“Quark” was a nonce word used by James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann proposed the Quark model and named the elementary particle after Joyce’s word. On the choice of the work, Gell-Mann commented: 

Yes, a physicist doing serious work named his model after an once meaningless word. Sure, made-up words mean nothing and thus aren’t to be used in any context. Hah! 

I believe it’s unnecessary to state the role of made-up words in literature, as it’s been clearly defined and described before. As I already mentioned, words are coined every day. If nobody publishes them, then, how are they supposed to become widespread?

The most inane argument I’ve ever encountered is, without any doubt, this.

Language is not set of clearly established rules or some institution. Language is a living thing. You don’t choose to keep a word in use because of its practicality or its usefulness. Culture, circumstances and many other factors render words obsolete, brings some new meanings and creates others, but those are the defining factors. Not an academy, not standards, not your opinion but usage is the only thing that makes language change (or not). 

What you consider tradition probably means nothing to others. Example: for a speaker of AAVE, “you crazy” is tradition, as zero-copula is productive in said dialect, while for some looks “ungrammatical”. Who’s right? Nobody, as there’s no right way to use language.

We must accept language changes, and its mutation it’s not defined by anyone but it’s users. It doesn’t happen at a regular or controlled pace, it just fucking happens. One day you wake up and you find out that “VHS” is no longer a widely known acronym, that “rewind” has lost most of it connotation. The time passes, the verb “tweet” loses all meaning while other neologisms arise. Nobody plans the disappearance or appearance of a word. Nobody calculates the time from now till we drop all kinds of hyphenation. Nobody decides when contractions are getting rid of their apostrophes. It just happens.

It’s time to accept words for what they are, and not for what academics want them to be. Use words as you please. Give them new meanings. Mix them. Create new from old ones. Coin them out of thin air. Revive obsolete words or kill words in use. Use language as you please, for it’s intended to be that way.

Linguists have been using SCIENCE for years to show language as it is, the human capacity of acquiring and using complex methods of communication, and not the boring construct academies propose. There’s no such thing as “invention and tradition”, but a continuum of events that shape the way we express ourselves. 

And if someone says they’re a “prescriptive linguist”, be wary of that asshole.

1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.

According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns. A 2009 Kauffman Foundation study found that the great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds, with less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds.

2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.

In a world listing compiled by a reputable research team (which nevertheless prompted double-checking), the U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.

3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.

The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world’s Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that’s $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.

4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.

After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.

U.S. corporations have shown a pattern of tax reluctance for more than 50 years, despite building their businesses with American research and infrastructure. They’ve passed the responsibility on to their workers. For every dollar of workers’ payroll tax paid in the 1950s, corporations paid three dollars. Now it’s 22 cents.

5. Just TEN Americans made a total of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS in one year.

That’s enough to pay the salaries of over a million nurses or teachers or emergency responders.

That’s enough, according to 2008 estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN’s World Food Program, to feed the 870 million people in the world who are lacking sufficient food.

For the free-market advocates who say “they’ve earned it”: Point #1 above makes it clear how the wealthy make their money.

6. Tax deductions for the rich could pay off 100 PERCENT of the deficit.

Another stat that required a double-check. Based on research by the Tax Policy Center, tax deferrals and deductions and other forms of tax expenditures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes), which largely benefit the rich, are worth about 7.4% of the GDP, or about $1.1 trillion.

Other sources have estimated that about two-thirds of the annual $850 billion in tax expenditures goes to the top quintile of taxpayers.

7. The average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 IN NET WORTH.

The Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that median wealth for black and Hispanic women is a little over $100. That’s much less than one percent of the median wealth for single white women ($41,500).

Other studies confirm the racially-charged economic inequality in our country. For every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.

8. Elderly and disabled food stamp recipients get $4.30 A DAY FOR FOOD.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, serving only about a quarter of the families in poverty, and paying less than $400 per month for a family of three for housing and other necessities. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working households.

Food stamp recipients get $4.30 a day.

9. Young adults have lost TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR NET WORTH since 1984.

21- to 35-year-olds: Your median net worth has dropped 68% since 1984. It’s now less than $4,000.

That $4,000 has to pay for student loans that average $27,200. Or, if you’re still in school, for $12,700 in credit card debt.

With an unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds of almost 50%, two out of every five recent college graduates are living with their parents. But your favorite company may be hiring. Apple, which makes a profit of $420,000 per employee, can pay you about $12 per hour.

10. The American public paid about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS to bail out the banks.

That’s about the same amount of money made by America’s richest 10% in one year. But we all paid for the bailout. And because of it, we lost the opportunity for jobs, mortgage relief, and educational funding.

Bonus for the super-rich: A QUADRILLION DOLLARS in securities trading nets ZERO sales tax revenue for the U.S.

The world derivatives market is estimated to be worth over a quadrillion dollars (a thousand trillion). At least $200 trillion of that is in the United States. In 2011 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported a trading volume of over $1 quadrillion on 3.4 billion annual contracts.

A quadrillion dollars. A sales tax of ONE-TENTH OF A PENNY on a quadrillion dollars could pay off the deficit. But the total sales tax was ZERO.

It’s not surprising that the very rich would like to fudge the numbers, as they have the nation.

Why do you all frown upon bisexuals? I’ve sat in on numerous conversations with lesbians/gays and their attitudes towards bisexuals stumps me. I don’t get it, explain to me what’s so horrible about being bisexual.

A lot of people see bisexual people as unfaithful and whorish….

Its not horrible but I don’t think it’s fair. It’s like they wanna have their cake and eat it too whenever they want. that’s fine if that’s what you choose to do, but I would never date a bi girl or woman. I see it like this, you had sex with a dude last month and then you want me to eat you? Nah, I’ll pass. in my head I’ll feel like I’m eating pussy that’s mixed with penis. That’s my theory.

I’ve never encountered this attitude towards bisexuals with someone I was unlucky enough to get nearly in bed with, but it did happen once when a guy I was casually sleeping with disliked another guy I was casually sleeping with.  (To be fair, I soon disliked them both.)  It grossed him out that he was rubbing up against flesh that had also been enjoyed by a dude he was not bros with.  That he was, you could say, sharing my body with that other. 

It took me some time to understand why his disgust disgusted me; I eventually got as far as, I’m not a sandwich, but by then the whole fight was mooted by his personality. 

I hate the idea that my body is somehow imprinted, smudged up, by the people I’ve gone to bed with.  That idea bothers me even if the only bodies that have the power to contaminate me are male bodies.  Maybe that makes it worse.  I don’t like the idea that I’m diminished in the eyes of any lover by the way I’ve used my sexed body—how many people have touched me or come inside me or fucked me over and embarrassed me or taken me in or shown me out.  Sex is loyalty and regret: every woman you go to bed with carries around sordid experience. 

And the idea of sex as an indulgence to be enjoyed or reserved strikes me as wrongheaded.  There’s no reason a woman can’t fuck bunch of men and then fall in love with one woman and love her forever.  Neither invalidates the other. 

If you can’t go down on a bisexual woman without thinking of whatever men might have touched her, that’s your lookout.  But no bisexual woman belongs to any of the men she’s had sex with, even if she did really enjoy it, and you can’t expect any bisexual woman to respond well to the idea that she’s had too much semen in her to attract a nice girl like you.

Yes which is why I find absurd people bringing up the idea that in these discussions, bi women should shut up because lesbians are not privileged over them (true) and therefore gross misogynist comments about how you’re basically a semen receptacle forever stained by the touch of man are somehow not horribly offensive

it’s also a really dumb bb gay idea because thanks to heterosexism and internalized homophobia, most lesbians have had some form of sexual contact with men and may have even (gasp!) married them and/or had kids with them

you can get along that way if you live in a tiny pocket of 20-year-old cis gold stars, but unless you’re interested in making people ashamed of disclosing their history to you, it’s not very functional in the wider world

Becoming Whole.: Quick question for the gay community

I was gonna reblog this without comment but now my little grey cells* are stirring a bit so I’ll make a stab an additional comment (with an acknowledgment that the way the original conversation was structured was cissexist in the extreme).

Yes, to everything that has gone above! Judging women’s bodies this way is gross and misogynistic to the extreme!! Yuck!!!! There are few things that upset-borderline-trigger me like the idea of women who have sex with cis men as semen-receptacles.

The idea that women’s bodies are tainted by intimate contact with cis men is profoundly disturbing and I think plays into this collective unconscious idea that women’s bodies aren’t autonomous but ‘belong’ to the world so therefore accessing them you access their whole history and are somehow personally marked by it yourselves. I’m not articulating this very well either, something is niggling that I’m trying to express… in how women’s bodies are never seen as private. 

I mean, the depth of paranoia it takes to believe that a self-cleaning, constantly regenerating organ like the human skin somehow is permanently marked with sperm is… I mean I honestly find it profoundly upsetting and disturbing that anyone would perceive my body in such a fashion, as containing the grime of every person who has ever accessed it, rather than something autonomous and whole, that belongs only to me.

I think the implications of attitudes like this for survivors of violence and sexual assault are troubling and already deeply entrenched in society too.

As a queer sex worker who has a friendship network of other queer sex workers, we come up across this attitude all the fucking time. About the ways our bodies are seen as permanently marked by our work, that we’re somehow not queer or less queer, and how that relates to incredibly stigmatising and discriminatory attitudes against us, that there are large numbers of people  - of queer people! - who would rather choke than touch a dirty whore because no amount of scrubbing and showering will ever get the filthy mark of our clientele from our bodies and how that will somehow infect anyone we have recreational sex with and how incredibly upsetting that is as something to be imposed upon with - that our bodies somehow aren’t wholly our own, just because of who we may have had sex with.

ugh I don’t know if this made any sense.

*I’ve been watching way too much Poirot

Isn’t it odd how everyone that supports abortion has already been born?

Strangely, everyone who opposes abortion has also been born. It’s almost like you have to be born to have opinions… like it’s part of the basic definition of being a person or something. I’m so glad you pointed that out. It’s a really great point.

…this had five notes when I reblogged it.

And now it has more.

i’ve been meaning to Tumblr this incident, but i kept forgetting. on Sept 16 (Grito de Dolores, Mexico’s Independence Day), I went to the Mexico Independence fair with my friend, Ricardo. The majority of people at the fair were from Mexico, but there were also Central…

Growing up, my father warned me constantly that if I couldn’t avoid engaging with police, to be nothing less than deferential. “Talking too loud will get your tongue cut out,” he would say. “Stand too tall and they’ll see you swing.” Being Iranian, in a cultural climate particularly hostile toward even the suggestion of Islam, meant for him an extreme vulnerability to the violence of the state. Though it installed in me some serious and pervasive paranoia, I appreciate where he was coming from: difference is risk. All this to say, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Political rage is valid. Anti-police protest in the face of relentless targeted violence against queers, against POC, against women, absolutely. BUT, this sort of petulant and unnecessary disrespect of police is some serious white nonsense.

Oscar serving up realness

Alain Badiou

Adbusters, Volume 19 Number 3 “The Philosophy Issue”

(via nc4l)

Passage to Ecuador: Chomsky, Assange, sham justice, sham democracies. (via London Progressive Journal)

Filed under: Not surprised.

(via mehreenkasana)

They don’t hate us ‘cause we’re free. They hate us ‘cause we invaded their countries, gave their governments to the guys who promised to give us commodities, then sucked their land dry of any natural resources. Oh, and then tried to kill the people who tried to get their countries back.

And now there’s anywhere from two to four generations of people who hate the US for reasons we don’t even want to acknowledge, and they may not even have been taught.

But yeah. ‘Murica.

(via dontbearuiner)

Anyone who is interested in this phenomenon of American interference should read Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer.  It’s as fascinating and informative as it is horrifying.

(via airspaniel)

This is a resource post for all the Good White Person™s out there. You know, the ones who say things like “It’s not my fault I’m white! Don’t generalize white people!”, or “I’m appreciating your culture! You should be proud!”, or “Why do you hate all white people, look I’m a special snowflake who’s not racist give me an award for meeting the minimum requirements for being a decent human being”. Well, if you are actually interested in understanding racism and how it ties into cultural appropriation, please read instead of endlessly badgering PoCs on tumblr with your cliched, unoriginal arguments and repeating the same questions over and over.

On White Privilege aka don’t blame me just because I’m white:

On Reverse Racism aka you are being racist against white people:

On Cultural Appropriation aka I’m just appreciating your culture:

Assorted Vials of White Tears and Miscellaneous Antidotes aka I can’t change that I’m white/not all whites are racist/we are all humans:

Okay. I agree. I’ve been socially conditioned not to notice racism and recognize my privilege. What can I do?

I don’t care about this bullshit; you’re making a big deal out of nothing, go home and delete your blog:

Quality megapost.

I was wondering if you've seen

forgottencartoons submitted:

I think this is really good, and the part about how all the pressures on women to be beautiful, thin, diet, not have fat in the “wrong” areas, etc can feel like a prison pinged me HARD, because when my ED was really bad it started to occur to me that I could NEVER stop it, and I felt completely and utterly trapped.

The scariest part was that I realized that there was no end point.  I had to keep starving myself and exercising because I was defying the natural weight/size/shape my body wanted to be in, so I could never stop, I could never go back to eating normally.  And that’s on top of how absolutely trapped I was in the mindset of my starving and exercising being a compulsion at that point too.  But before I could tackle the compulsion, I had to let go of the idea of what my body had to look like to be “beautiful” and to be worthwhile.

And realizing that it was NEVER. GOING. TO. END. was horrifying.

When I started dieting, which ended up spiraling down, I never thought of the end point.  I thought, eventually, I’d reach where I wanted to be, I’d be beautiful, and then I’d be happy… but once I got there, I started to realize, I’m trapped.  There’s no way out.  If I go back to where I was, so would my body.  I had gone all in, and it would all be wasted, if I gave up now, so I could only go deeper.

Eventually, I started to cry at the realization that I couldn’t see anything other than starving, exercising, until the day I died.  And I had already suffered so much to get to this point, if I went back, what would be the point?  At least I had accomplished something.  And the sad part is, being thin, controlling your food intake, being “beautiful”, is an “accomplishment” for women in our society.  And it’s what my brain latched onto.  After the trauma that happened to me half a year before, I felt like an utter and total failure as a person, and my brain latched onto a way society told me I could prove myself a success as a woman: “be size 0, be beautiful”.

Some days, I wished I would just die in the middle of exercising because then I’d have an end point.  I reached the finish line, having achieved my goal, and now it was over.  I just wanted it to be over.

Even now, when my body image issues are really bad, when my ED stuff flares up, it feels absolutely like a prison, that I’m trapped, that my options are limited with what I can do, what I can eat, how little I can exercise, everything.  I don’t feel free at all, and I miss feeling free.  I miss my life before the ED, I miss feeling free and amazing.   I miss before my entire world became about calories, and exercise, and looking at myself in the mirror.  I miss not compulsively planning my entire day around what I’m going to eat, how much I’m going to eat, trying to force myself to believe it’s okay to eat a little more, planning my entire day around exercise. 

One day I hope I can reach the place she writes about, where I’ve stolen the key from the warden and leave my prison.

Noam Chomsky (via violettemaps)

sexual violence is not sexy: reimagining masculinities and what it means to be a man

men:

i don’t hate you and you know that so please don’t even say it. we don’t need to go down that road. i have listened to too many of your stories, stared into too many of your eyes, i have sucked too many dicks and loved it, learned too much wisdom and gained too much friendship to write men off. if i hated you i would just say fuck it. there’s no way i would spend so much time negotiating all this sexist bullshit.

so now that we’ve got that out of the way and you know that i’m coming from a place of love, i have to say this.

you can face yourself and you don’t have to be ashamed. it takes more courage and more strength to say no to a power that comes from domination and humiliation than it does to take part in it. i know that there is a part of you that remembers the helplessness of being  a child. i know you remember being tiny. and i want you to know the importance of that knowledge. it is fundamental wisdom. please stop repressing it. you can be vulnerable and i won’t think of you as less of a man.

you can be a real man and: express affection for your male friends, fuck guys, love eating pussy, take it up the ass, have feelings, like fashion, give a shit about stuff, feel pain, say no, cry, be wrong, learn from your mistakes, grow. you can be a real man and: tell your girlfriend you love her in public, show respect to the women in your life, not laugh at sexist and homophobic jokes, not condone sexual violence. you can be a real man and: desire body types not represented in the media, not have a huge dick, not want to take part in violence.

we have to move away from these narrow, violent, misogynist, homophobic definitions of masculinity and/or manhood. this shit is toxic. we need to let little boys cry and listen to lady gaga if they want to. we need to establish a culture that raises boys to be men who respect and love themselves and who don’t seek power through domination (out of a desperate fear of being dominated and humiliated). i want to tell you guys that i am committed to that culture. i’m not going to make fun of the size of your dick and i’m not going to laugh at you for having feelings and i can think of you as a whole person.

can you do the same for me?

can you unobjectify my body? can you purge yourself of the toxic messages you have learned about womens sexuality? can you love me unpossesively? can you fuck me in a way that is more than a validation of your manhood? do you have to put your dick inside me every time we fuck? can we just be friends? can we have a conversation without you staring at my tits? can you take rape seriously, please? we aren’t asking for it. i mean it. and i know you know it’s true.

will you take the time to think about this shit? will you talk to your friends about it? are you committed to a culture where women are treated like human beings? does sexual violence offend and disgust you? if so, how are you committed to that ethic in your every day life? if not, what are you lying to yourself about? what have you done, condoned, looked away from that you are now afraid of facing? why does acknowledging my humanity terrify you?

we need to move past stereotypes of feminists as man-haters. hating men would be an easy solution. but life’s not that easy. people, human beings, are fucking beautiful and lovable. it is not so easy to write them off. i love human beings and a lot of human beings are men and i want to be able to talk to you, have relationships with you, pass you on the street, change the world together in a way where we can both be full human beings. i am looking at you straight on, level in the eye, and i am asking you, can you recognize my humanity and your own? because i am committed to this. i want us both to be full human beings.

i want to create a culture where violence, sexual violence, disrespect, harassment and humiliating others is seen as the furthest thing from masculine. this will not only liberate women and save countless lives, allow for honest communication between men and women and chip away at homophobia, it will also allow men to stop putting on the facade and just be people. let’s make it happen. it is most definitely within our power to do so.