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The Constant Reader

@dorothyparkerwashere / dorothyparkerwashere.tumblr.com

“My Kali kills. My Draupadi strips. My Sita climbs on a stranger’s lap. All my women militate. They brave bombs, belittle kings, take on the sun, take after me.” Meena Kandasamy
Report from early 1990s about the persecution of Kashmiri Hindus that led to their exodus from the Kashmir valley.

This needs to be seen. This part of history is so often forgotten. No more. You cannot torture innocents and then hope no one will remember. You don’t get to revise history.

Why is this never talked about? Hindus were driven out of their homeland through torture. Why are Hindu victims of religious persecution ignored? What’s with the double standard?

Why is this never talked about?

ok so the other day i was at sears. I was in the baby section. Im standing there looking at clothes and a lady who works there comes up and is like “oh are you expecting?” And i was like “uhhhh” and because im a dumbass i was like “no i already delivered.” And she was like “How long ago?” And i was just like “two weeks.” And she said “wow! You look great! When i had my first son, i looked like a mess for six months. Is it a boy or a girl?” And i was just awkwardly like “a girl….” And she asked her name and i said Chernobyl and she was like “oh what a cute name! It sounds really familiar.” And i honestly just stood there going through all that and pretending i had a human baby two weeks ago named Chernobyl because i didnt wanna tell this poor lady i was buying baby clothes for my fucking baby opossum

every time i see this text post i forget the ending and every single time it decimates me

my cat needs help

im making a new post with updated info, the old one had a lot of notes but not many donations lately. my cat has a limping leg and there’s a chance it might be a tumor; we tried to avoid it cause it’s dangerous (thats why i spent the donation money on visits and medicine) but it’s the last chance to know what the issue is. he’s in a lot of pain and im tired of seeing him like this

i need 250 euros (not 300 anymore cause i changed vet) at the moment, probably more if he has to get his leg amputated

unfortunately im in a very bad place mentally and i cant work.

so id be extremely grateful if you could donate or boost this.

and here’s my paypal:

good news! my mother’s partner decided to help me and mostly paid for the biopsy. we’re gonna get results in a couple of weeks: but there’s a high chance they amputate his leg (and my mothers bf cant pay for that too) so i still need money for that. thank you so much for all the donations so far, i was able to pay for visits and tests that werent covered by the price of the biopsy

Update (29/07)

They had to repeat the biopsy and we got the results. It’s a tumor.

So he needs his leg amputated and also another test to see if it spread in the rest of his body but amputation is the priority cause he’s suffering too much and that would take the pain away. my vet told me they’re gonna tell me the cost of everything these days but I guess it’s pretty high. I’m gonna post it as soon as I know

Please rb if you can.

Update (30/7)

my vets called me and said the cost of the test is 400 euros and the amputation 500 euros. now, im aware im probably never gonna manage to get 900 in donations but i need his leg amputated at least so he’s gonna stop suffering like this. please reblog this 

We need to talk about how families/parents/communities forcing religion upon people and how making them feel obligated to follow a religion through either:

  • Tradition
  • Emotional/mental abuse
  • Fear tactics 
  • Manipulation
  • The threat of physical violence
  • Threat being shunned 
  • Fear of disownment/homelessness
  • Pressure from bribery or blackmail
  • Pressure through guilt

 is really damaging and traumatic to peoples mental health.

And we need to talk about it now. 

I was raised Muslim and told over and over again that I was dirty and worthless without Islam. My sister implied numerous times that she’d convince my mom to kick me out if I ever rejected it. Back in high school when I was suicidal and cutting myself, my mom and sister were mad at me because I was sinning, not worried for my safety or mental health. To this day, I can directly trace issues I have with sexuality and all forms of intimacy to my religious upbringing.

I want men to try and imagine going about your day–working, running, hiking, whatever–and not being allowed to wear pants under threats of violence or total social and economic exclusion.

That’s the kind of irrationally violent and controlling behaviour women have been up against.

Also for anyone who thinks it’s easy for women to be gender non conforming because we can wear pants.

The only reason we can is because we fought tooth and nail for the right to! Any rights we take for granted today we’re the result of a prolonged, bitter battle fought by our predecessors for every inch of territory gained. Never forget that.

Title IX (1972) declared that girls could not be required to wear skirts to school.

Women who were United States senators were not allowed to wear trousers on the Senate floor until 1993, after senators Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun wore them in protest, which encouraged female staff members to do likewise.

This was never given to us. Women have had to fight just to be able to wear pants. Women who are still alive remember having to wear skirts to school, even in the dead of winter, when it was so cold that just having a layer of tights between them and the elements was downright dangerous. Women who remember not even being allowed to wear pants under their skirts, for no other reason than they were female.

So don’t talk about women wearing pants being gender nonconforming like it’s easy. It’s only less difficult now because your foremothers refused to comply.

I need a wheelchair and I'm poor. Please help me get a chair so I'm not trapped at home.

I really need some help with getting a wheelchair. I was trapped in my house for almost 3 weeks because of mobility issues, my crutches aren't always enough. Because of serious side-effects, I can't keep using the steroid treatments that have kept me mobile.

I need a decent chair that won't cause further joint problems or stress fractures with my brittle bones. If I reach my goal of $1100 I can get a decent chair. If I go over the cost of the chair I'll donate the rest to Intersex Human Rights Australia (https://ihra.org.au/). If I somehow go way way over, I might be able to afford a momentum assisted chair.

Anything helps, and I appreciate it immensely.

I really really need this. Feeling trapped is awful, and with a chair it's at least possible for people to help me get out, even when my shoulders are fucked.

Hopefully the chair I want is still on sale when I can afford it.

Please share or donate. I need this so badly.

https://chuffed.org/project/emily-needs-a-wheelchair

(OMG TUMBLR!!!! PLEASE JUST LET ME POST THE LINK!!! "TUMBLR WENT BUNGLY WUNGLY" 😡)

Ugh that post has gotten me thinking about fat acceptance in a way I haven’t in years. I’ve read more studies about weight and health than probably any other topic I’ve ever researched. And every time I see someone wail about health I am just like

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

Anyway, if you want a place to start reading about the issue, this article is a pretty good launching pad. 

This casual rant is like a primer on weight science. Amazing. I second their book recommendations, and would add to the list Body Respect by Drs Bacon & Aphramor, Body of Truth by journalist Harriet Brown, and What’s Wrong with Fat? by UCLA professor of sociology Abigail Saguy.

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Wolves React To Gamekeeper Who Had Been Away On Maternity Leave

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“WHERE’S YOUR PUPPY! WE WANNA SEE YOUR PUPPY! DID YOU JUST HAVE THE ONE? DO YOU HAVE THEM WITH YOU? ARE THERE PHOTOS?”

I’m not a hundred percent positive but I’m pretty sure this is the wild life center where I visited wolves.

And the safety briefing included the question “So if you’re pregnant, do you want to know or not?”

Turns out there had been a bit of an awkward situation once where the keepers had casually mentioned a woman’s pregnancy in a group, and she herself didn’t even know yet. Turns out the wolves are excellent at telling if you’re pregnant and the keepers can tell based on their body language.  They get all odd and careful around pregnancy. (Even wolves knows that you have to take care of pregnant people.)

So they definitely knew she was pregnant.

And if I remember my BBC documentaries right, a wolf will leave the pack to give birth and introduce the cubs to the pack once she feels ready for it. And maternity leave is flexible but often around 6 months so they’re going “YOU WERE GONE FOREVER! WE WERE SO WORRIED! WHERE ARE THE CUBS?? WE HAVE TO GREET THE CUBS!!“ 

Also the two on her back are fighting over who gets to greet her first. Giving and receiving attention is a commodity that goes by hierarchy and if you don’t accept that there will be scuffles.. The wolf lying down next to her isn’t chill about her coming back, it’s just submissive to the other wolves and waiting for it’s turn to show excitement.

Now I can see why we domesticated these adorable jerks.

Wolf packs have maternity leave?

Wolves: better than American companies.

As this discourse around body positivity and self love gets co-opted more and more by people who are already scaling high on the desirability scale and who are loved by the whole world already-I am forced to ask myself: who is all this ‘love yourself’ rhetoric for? ••• People didn’t learn to hate themselves by themselves. We didn’t wake up hating our bodies or who we are. We were taught that. Everyday. By society. By the people around us. ••• So if we didn’t learn to hate ourselves by ourselves, why should we learn to love ourselves all by ourselves? ••• So the next time you want to yell ‘love yourself’ to someone, why don’t you love them instead? * * * #selflove #feminist #feminism #intersectionality #intersectionalfeminism #loveyourself #loveyourselfquotes #privilege #thinprivilege #beautystandards (at Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx_MVQTBCgd/?igshid=oiwstly7zphm

6:1

Modi won by a 6:1 margin against his main opposition.

Overall his party received close to 2/3 of the votes.

His main opposition guy, Rahul Gandhi of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, lost his home seat for the first time since 2004.

This is what it looks like when a country or 1.3 billion people slaps an out-of-touch dynasty and its imperialist media puppets in the face.

Respect the Indian people’s wishes.

Jesus. This was the most western shit I’ve seen in a long time. This is why westerners like this blog needs to keep their fucking mouth shut and learn.

Modi is fascist. He is India’s trump. The fact that y’all can’t see his shows how little you even know about India. The BJP party has threatened Muslims, Dalits and other minorities. They insist on forcing Hindi I to the southern states which have steadfastly refused to speak it.

His win is a dangerous precedent for the world’s largest democracy and the fact that @thisiseverydayracism is actually celebrating this proves what I’ve been saying for a long time.

American and the west KNOW FUCKING NOTHING ABOUT THE GLOBAL SOUTH. They know nothing about the different dynamics of oppression we undergo. They want to open their stupid mouths and say stupid shit like this because they (especially Americans) are unable to understand basic things about anyone else but will demand that we pay attention to everything that happens there.

If you reacted badly to Trump but well to Modi, you are a fucking idiot.