uh CLASSIC

@newagetraveler-punk

Original Sin

the bae’s knaes

ATTENTION TRANS PEOPLE

if you are looking for a name change but cant afford the basically $400 like most people then go to your local court house and ask for an “indigent form” that form you will state that you cant afford to change your name. so then it will be free if very little.

feel free to add to this if other states have any more information

Landon told me to do this so when I went to the county clerks office I asked for a fee waiver, I had to go to the law library to get the right paperwork then filled out my income and my monthly expenses and they waived my $290 court fee. I still had to pay for the notary and fingerprints and whatnot before all that but it ended up being around $50 total rather than $300+ definitely look into it if you need some financial help with this process!

Additionally this link had all the info for name changes in TX that I needed: http://www.transequality.org/documents/state/texas

(I think you can go on that site and select other states as well so it should be helpful!)

good luck to anyone who is choosing to come out to anyone today. good luck to anyone who doesnt feel ready or safe to come out today. good luck to everyone who is already out.

hastily put together my OWN yuri on ice about a figure skater and hockey player that use the same ice rink and Nakita discovers herself and what she wants as she discovers another girl, from the hockey team, starts crushing on her. 

@xtremecaffeine

Now THIS I can get behind!

Please make this a real series

Saying that man and woman are the only genders is actually LESS nuanced than saying that earth, water, air, and fire are the only elements.

If you think about it, all these thinkpieces about how Millenials are “killing” various industries reveal a pretty colossal sense of entitlement.

Under normal circumstances, if a given industry finds itself unable to sell products to a given market demographic, we’d say it’s that industry’s fault for failing to offer products that that demographic is interested in buying.

It only makes sense to blame the target demographic itself is if we’re assuming that the established industries have some intrinsic right to that demographic’s disposable income that’s being denied - which is clearly nonsense.

And I thought Millennials were supposed to be the entitled ones?

“Hark, yonder youth doth be defenestrating mine guild of manure! Donst they knoweth the greatness of mine shit?”

For the first time ever, networks are promising to consider the 30 most up-voted questions submitted by Americans.

Currently, it seems like FWD:FWD:Re: style conservatives are submitting and voting the most,as the top questions are more like accusations aimed at specifically Hillary, or prompts for Trump to regurgitate his favorite buzzwords.

We have the Internet too. We have a voice: let’s use it in venues outside tumblr so Trump doesn’t get more advantages.

Vote on and submit meaningful questions that challenge both candidates to talk policy.

Please vote on my first question, linked here and above, which challenges both candidates to offer their opinion on LGBT and suggest real solutions that can work against the “religious freedom” arguments of the Alt-Right.

My second question focuses on how at-risk (poor, often minority) students and students with disabilities fare under high-stakes testing. Please vote for it here.

Please Reblog. Tweet. Facebook. We can do this.

DO THIS! So far the highest voted questions are thinly veiled jibes about deleting emails - just chances for Trump to go off on one. THIS TAKES LIKE TWO SECONDS! The right are very active when it comes to shit like this so don’t let them win it over, like the o.p says we have the internet too so let’s level this playing field. Let’s make Trump really struggle.

Seriously guys, please go to this site! The top ones are stupid questions involving gun control and a couple asking why requiring and for ID to vote is racist -__-

Help the real important questions be on top!

We have worked our way up to 700 votes since last night! Thank you!

Let’s increase that momentum.

The networks are only considering the top 30 questions, and they all have thousands of votes.  

Our GOAL is to reach 3000 to start to catch up tomorrow.

Most of the top 30 questions are proudly deplorable gifts to Trump. It would be a double victory if we made this go viral enough to not only prompt a dialogue on LGBT issues, but to also knock off one of those terrible questions!

Other questions worth bolstering (You can vote for multiple questions):

SIGNAL BOOST, TWEET, FACEBOOK, GO!

If you’ve got the time please help keep the alt right white nationalists from dominating every debate because the mainstream media still hasn’t learned how the internet works

LISTEN I know this is a stupid Sponge Bob reference I KNOW THIS WHOLE COMIC IS STUPid  but I drew this while half asleep and listening to The View what more do you want from me? 

so, um, major warning for discussion of csa/victim blaming in episode 7 of marvel’s luke cage, between 40 & 43mins in

it’s really intense & honestly super triggering so be cautious i guess

humanizations of my Parents

@jhenne-bean

THIS IS SO CUTE

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

I never knew this.

I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most people’s windows were closed) tried to help in some way.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

(Also, going by the content of the murderer’s confession, it was indeed a random attack.)

how on EARTH was this “scientifically” studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!

How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go!  That’s how it gets taught as this supposed “scientific study.”  Someone got fucking lazy.

Spread the real deal, kids.

A book about this, “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!

The way that we learn about Helen Keller in school is an absolute outrage. We read “The Miracle Worker”- the miracle worker referring to her teacher; she’s not even the title character in her own story. The narrative about disabled people that we are comfortable with follows this format- “overcoming” disability. Disabled people as children. Helen Keller as an adult, though? She was a radical socialist, a fierce disability advocate, and a suffragette. There’s no reason she should not be considered a feminist icon, btw, and the fact that she isn’t is pure ableism- while other white feminists of that time were blatent racists, she was speaking out against Woodrew Wilson because of his vehement racism. She supported woman’s suffrage and birth control. She was an anti-war speaker. She was an initial donor to the NAACP. She spoke out about the causes of blindness- often disease caused by poverty and poor working conditions. She was so brave and outspoken that the FBI had a file on her because of all the trouble she caused.

Yet when we talk about her, it’s either the boring, inspiration porn story of her as a child and her heroic teacher, or as the punchline of ableist, misogynistic jokes. It’s not just offensive, it’s downright disgusting.

the reason the story stops once hellen keller learns to talk is no one wanted to listen to what she had to say

how’s that for a fucking punchline

It’s not that I disagree that we should all be aware of what a badass Helen Keller became, because she had a long and amazing career as an activist and yes, a feminist hero. It’s that somehow when people talk about the ableism of the way Helen’s story is told they always seem to forget this: Anne Sullivan, her teacher, was blind. Seriously. From Wikipedia:

“When she was only five years old she contracted a bacterial eye disease known as trachoma, which created painful infections and over time made her nearly blind.[2] When she was eight, her mother passed away and her father abandoned the children two years later for fear he could not raise them on his own.[2] She and her younger brother, James (“Jimmie”), were sent to an overcrowded almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts (today part of Tewksbury Hospital). He, who suffered a debilitating hip ailment, died three months into their stay. She remained at the Tewksbury house for four years after his death, where she had eye operations that offered some short-term relief for her eye pain but ultimately proved ineffective.[3]“

Eventually some operations did restore part of her eyesight, but by the end of her life she was entirely blind. Also:

“Due to Anne losing her sight at such a young age she had no skills in reading, writing, or sewing and the only work she could find was as a housemaid; however, this position was unsuccessful.[2] Another blind resident staying at the Tewksbury almshouse told her of schools for the blind. During an 1880 inspection of the almshouse, she convinced an inspector to allow her to leave and enroll in the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where she began her studies on October 7, 1880.[2] Although her rough manners made her first years at Perkins humiliating for her, she managed to connect with a few teachers and made progress with her learning.[2] While there, she befriended and learned the manual alphabet from Laura Bridgman, a graduate of Perkins and the first blind and deaf person to be educated there.”

So Anne Sullivan, disabled and born into serious poverty, learns the manual alphabet from a deaf and blind friend; passes that alphabet on to her deaf and blind student. This isn’t the story of an abled-bodied teacher swooping in to ‘save’ a disabled child; it’s a series of disabled women helping each other. Helen Keller’s story is the story not of one badass disabled woman, but of two. Anne and Helen were lifelong friends; Anne died holding Helen’s hand. 

Also is there a book called “The Miracle Worker”? I thought that was the movie/movies based on “The Story of My Life” by Helen Keller. But I could be wrong. And I didn’t learn any of this in school in general but that’s neither here nor there. 

I can recommend the ‘62 version of “The Miracle Worker” with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It’s blatant about Sullivan’s impoverished background and eye problems - her rage on Helen’s behalf isn’t abstract at all, it’s very, very personal. And that’s the most amazing thing about this movie: Anne and Helen are the angriest people on earth. I have no idea if that was erased from the remakes but in the original they are both allowed to have a ton of anger about what has been done to them and what they have been denied. 

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Here’s a picture of Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin:

omfg I am so mad right now because not only did the kids biography of Helen Keller I read when I was younger erase all her activism, but it very explicitly completely erased anything about Anne being blind herself.

There were scenes of her WATCHING Helen from across the room or yard, and it was all very “oh my, I just MUST save this poor little disabled girl, no other deaf blind person has EVER BEEN EDUCATED and basically it was awful and shitty.

I think everyone should read Helen and Teacher. It’s an absolute brick of a book, hundreds of pages, but it is wonderful. It’s about their whole lives, right up to Helen’s death in old age. It talks about Helen’s feminism, socialism, and campaigning for everything from equal rights to sexual health. Helen Keller was not a syrupy, greeting card girl who existed to make able people feel warm and fuzzy, she was a tireless academic, political activist and writer. She was making noise about the issues she cared about from the moment her partnership with Annie Sullivan began, and she never stopped.

Reblogging because I had no idea Anne Sullivan was disabled and that makes this entire story mean so much more to me.

I read everything I could get my hands on about Helen Keller AND Anne Sullivan when I was a kid. Stay curious!

my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion

“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”

“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*

*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”

“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”