a moment of silence for the brave americans who still believe this 😤😤😤

on june 12, the same mainstream gay media that has remained silent on the close into 5,000 deaths in puerto rico, which included lgbtq boricuas, will dominate and erase queer & trans boricua voices in their coverage of the 2 year anniversary of the pulse massacre. this is why we must remain to speak our stories to each other. always. every gawd damn day. . so on this day of the national puerto rican day parade, i raise up all of the queer and trans boricuas i shared time and space with during my time in puerto rico. they continue to remind me of the resiliency and pain of the queer and trans boricuas on and off of the island. . photo taken by @lou_rok during the san juan pride parade on june 3, 2018.

The lesson to be learned from Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther: spend more time on sibling relationships and less time on grimdark or bullshit romance plots. It works out much better.

#and also more critiques of colonialism

mood every time i see that fucking banner on here

please take the time to remember every member of our community who was lost from aids. our government did nothing to save them. our schools do nothing to remember them. an entire generation of lgbt culture and history has been lost, the generation just before our own. remember them when people ask why theres suddenly so many lgbt kids in this generation. we’ve always been here. we cant be stomped out. we will remember our roots and by doing so we can keep those we have lost alive.

“ remember them when people ask why theres suddenly so many lgbt kids in this generation “

Ouch, and Amen.

Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no one’s records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the law—in letter and in spirit—in the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood.

1) “Do you know why I stopped you?” Cops ask this, not because they want to have a friendly chat, but because they want you to incriminate yourself. They are hoping you will “voluntarily” confess to having broken the law, whether it was something they had already noticed or not. You may think you are apologizing, or explaining, or even making excuses, but from the cop’s perspective, you are confessing. He is not there to serve you; he is there fishing for an excuse to fine or arrest you. In asking you the familiar question, he is essentially asking you what crime you just committed. And he will do this without giving you any “Miranda” warning, in an effort to trick you into testifying against yourself.

2) “Do you have something to hide?” Police often talk as if you need a good reason for not answering whatever questions they ask, or for not consenting to a warrantless search of your person, your car, or even your home. The ridiculous implication is that if you haven’t committed a crime, you should be happy to be subjected to random interrogations and searches. This turns the concept of due process on its head, as the cop tries to put the burden on you to prove your innocence, while implying that your failure to “cooperate” with random harassment must be evidence of guilt.

3) “Cooperating will make things easier on you.” The logical converse of this statement implies that refusing to answer questions and refusing to consent to a search will make things more difficult for you. In other words, you will be punished if you exercise your rights. Of course, if they coerce you into giving them a reason to fine or arrest you, they will claim that you “voluntarily” answered questions and “consented” to a search, and will pretend there was no veiled threat of what they might do to you if you did not willingly “cooperate.” (Such tactics are also used by prosecutors and judges via the procedure of “plea-bargaining,” whereby someone accused of a crime is essentially told that if he confesses guilt—thus relieving the government of having to present evidence or prove anything—then his suffering will be reduced. In fact, “plea bargaining” is illegal in many countries precisely because it basically constitutes coerced confessions.)

4) “We’ll just get a warrant.” Cops may try to persuade you to “consent” to a search by claiming that they could easily just go get a warrant if you don’t consent. This is just another ploy to intimidate people into surrendering their rights, with the implication again being that whoever inconveniences the police by requiring them to go through the process of getting a warrant will receive worse treatment than one who “cooperates.” But by definition, one who is threatened or intimidated into “consenting” has not truly consented to anything.

5.) We have someone who will testify against you Police “informants” are often individuals whose own legal troubles have put them in a position where they can be used by the police to circumvent and undermine the constitutional rights of others. For example, once the police have something to hold over one individual, they can then bully that individual into giving false, anonymous testimony which can be used to obtain search warrants to use against others. Even if the informant gets caught lying, the police can say they didn’t know, making this tactic cowardly and illegal, but also very effective at getting around constitutional restrictions.

6) “We can hold you for 72 hours without charging you.” Based only on claimed suspicion, even without enough evidence or other probable cause to charge you with a crime, the police can kidnap you—or threaten to kidnap you—and use that to persuade you to confess to some relatively minor offense. Using this tactic, which borders on being torture, police can obtain confessions they know to be false, from people whose only concern, then and there, is to be released.

7) “I’m going to search you for my own safety.” Using so-called “Terry frisks” (named after the Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1), police can carry out certain limited searches, without any warrant or probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, under the guise of checking for weapons. By simply asserting that someone might have a weapon, police can disregard and circumvent the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.

U.S. courts have gone back and forth in deciding how often, and in what circumstances, tactics like those mentioned above are acceptable. And of course, police continually go far beyond anything the courts have declared to be “legal” anyway. But aside from nitpicking legal technicalities, both coerced confessions and unreasonable searches are still unconstitutional, and therefore “illegal,” regardless of the rationale or excuses used to try to justify them. Yet, all too often, cops show that to them, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—and any other restrictions on their power—are simply technical inconveniences for them to try to get around. In other words, they will break the law whenever they can get away with it if it serves their own agenda and power, and they will ironically insist that they need to do that in order to catch “law-breakers” (the kind who don’t wear badges).

Of course, if the above tactics fail, police can simply bully people into confessing—falsely or truthfully—and/or carry out unconstitutional searches, knowing that the likelihood of cops having to face any punishment for doing so is extremely low. Usually all that happens, even when a search was unquestionably and obviously illegal, or when a confession was clearly coerced, is that any evidence obtained from the illegal search or forced confession is excluded from being allowed at trial. Of course, if there is no trial—either because the person plea-bargains or because there was no evidence and no crime—the “exclusionary rule” creates no deterrent at all. The police can, and do, routinely break the law and violate individual rights, knowing that there will be no adverse repercussions for them having done so.

Likewise, the police can lie under oath, plant evidence, falsely charge people with “resisting arrest” or “assaulting an officer,” and commit other blatantly illegal acts, knowing full well that their fellow gang members—officers, prosecutors and judges—will almost never hold them accountable for their crimes. Even much of the general public still presumes innocence when it comes to cops accused of wrong-doing, while presuming guilt when the cops accuse someone else of wrong-doing. But this is gradually changing, as the amount of video evidence showing the true nature of the “Street Gang in Blue” becomes too much even for many police-apologists to ignore.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/7-ways-police-will-break-law-threaten-or-lie-you-get-what-they-want

One of the biggest realizations with dealing with cops for me was the fact that they CAN lie, they are 100% legally entitled to lie, and they WILL whether you’re a victim of crime, accused of committing a crime or anything else

This is why there needs to be a complete revamping of how the police system works.

stop setting things on fire because you're curious about what will happen

what will happen is fire

but what if…. something else happen. jusg this 1 time

“bastard” is no contest the funniest curse word

It somehow implies that the most hienous thing you’ve done is exist

I have to believe that everyone is at least a little sad that Peter’s Aunt May isn’t Melinda May, who he calls by her last name as a sign of respect.

Hear me out: Aunt May and Melinda May start dating, Peter ends up with Aunts May

INSIGHTFUL. BRILLIANT. REVOLUTIONARY. I’M IN.

i’ve been trying to hold back but. i gotta see what bill and ted fanfic is like. i gotta do it

this literally sounds like a line from the movie what the hell

this fic is actually GOOD i’ve never been more angry in my LIFE

i’m so mad and you should be too

listen i’m trying to stop clogging everyone’s dash with this nonsense but this is honestly the best line i have ever read in a fanfic in my entire LIFE i’m laughing so hard

i don’t know how i expected it to end to be honest

Powerful New Video Tackles Racial Bias To Remind Kids Their ‘Black Is Beautiful’

A new video released Monday titled “The Talk” compellingly tackles the impact of racial bias through the lens of black parents in America.

This video accurately displays what it is like to be black in America. It shows the conversations all black parents have with their kids to keep them safe and to encourage them to fight the racist society. And it’s heartbreaking that parents need to remind their kids that their “Black is beautiful”.Society needs to change and time has come to talk about this.

Source

When a marginalized group is asked for peaceful protesting, what is really being asked is for them to “protest” in a way that those with privilege can actively and happily ignore.

A True Hero. Remember her name, Reality Winner.

Justice For Reality.

If you’re interested in learning more, Intercepted did a podcast abt her here. She got arrested some 5 minutes after they posted something leaked anonymously, and due to the case being filed under the Espionage Act, she’s not allowed to even really present her case to a jury in any meaningful way. It’s fucked and needs to be talked about more

lesbians who prefer to use he/him pronouns are valid - for example, God

There is something unspeakably powerful about this post it carries an energy

Watch: It’s your right to share your salary, not doing so could be holding you back.

At my last company, one day someone in accounting approached me at lunch and quietly told me I need to ask for a raise because I was way underpaid.

They gave me a number to shoot for.  It was about twice than what I had been making at the time.

So I went online, did some research, found some figures backing up my claim, put it all together and went to my boss.

I got what I asked for.

If it hadn’t been for that person in accounting telling me I was way underpaid, I’d have never known.  I went from barely scraping by to being able to have a savings account and getting all my debts paid thanks to them.

You should at least check sites like salary.com to start the process of seeing what you should be making.

Because this is crucially important

Happy Pride Month Eleanor Roosevelt was queer, the Little Mermaid is a gay love story, James Dean liked men, Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, Nikola Tesla was asexual, Freddie Mercury was bisexual & British Indian, and black trans women pioneered the gay rights movement.

Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, Leonardo da Vinci was gay, Michelangelo too, Jane Austen liked women, Hatshepsut was not cisgender, and Alexander the Great was a power bottom

Honestly just reblogging for that last one

Probably not historically backed but fuck yes

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote love letters to Lorena Hickok

Love letters Hans Christian Anderson wrote to Edvard Collin contain elements that appeared in The Little Mermaid, which he was writing at the same time

Several people who knew James Dean have talked about his relationships with men 

Letters and poems allude to a romance between Emily Dickinson and at least two women 

Nikola Tesla was adverse to touch. He said he fell in love with one women but never touched her and didn’t want to get married 

Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender) 

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots

Florence Nightingale refused 4 marriage proposals and her letters and memoir suggest a love for women 

Leonardo da Vinci never married or fathered children, was once brought up on sodomy charges, and a sketch in one of his notebooks is 2 penises walking toward a hole labeled with the nickname of his apprentice 

Condivi said that Michelangelo often spoke exclusively of masculine love

Jane Austin never married and wrote about sharing a bed with women (Jane Austen At Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley)

Hatshepsut took the male title Pharaoh (instead of Queen Regent) and is depicted in art from the time the same way a male Pharaoh would have been

“Alexander was only defeated once…and that was by Hephaestion’s thighs.” is a 2,000 year old quote

I want to hire you to follow me around and defend my honor with meticulous research

And Shakespeare was bi too

She took up acting because the malnutrition she suffered under the nazis permanently damaged her health and prevented her from pursuing her dream to be a ballerina. During the war, she danced to raise money for the resistance - even though she was literally starving, she used what strength she had to make sure more nazis got shot. 

She and her mom also denounced their royal heritage because of the Nazis in their family

Also Audrey was a humanitarian until her death, though ill with cancer, she continued her work for UNICEF, travelling to Somalia, Kenya, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France and the United States.

These are things I literally never would have known about. I’m tired of women being painted as just being pretty.

I’M SO HAPPY TO SEE HER AT AN OLDER AGE I SWEAR!

Here’s another nice one.

Being in a room with straight people talking about straight things is so exhausting.

What the hell are ‘straight things’?

Marriages and mortgages and families and opposite sex attraction talk and talking about sex openly without being made to feel like you are making people uncomfortable and hearing straight people talk about how hard dating is for them and hearing straight people talk about how they are such victims and their lives are shit when what this really means is they aren’t married at age 22 and sexist crap that drives me crazy like traditional weddings and how great religion is and how the world is so lovely and kind and great because people don’t know what it’s like to be a minority and how straight people are like “this person is so lovely” when you know they are homophobic or listening to straight people say things are “gay” or talk about people who dress unconventionally (ie. men who wear dresses) as being weird or doing impressions of gay people or asking “why don’t you have a boyfriend?” judgementally as if it is just that easy or getting annoyed at you when you complain about how hard your life is because it’s easy for them cause they are straight and wouldn’t know the first thing about it or having to come out to people all the time cause they just assume you’re straight and getting weird looks like “tmi” or “you don’t look gay” or “I don’t care what you do in the bedroom” or having to hear straight people talk about really cute straight couples or really great romantic films or books about straight people or just watching people live super conventional lives and do really sexist old fashioned things just because no one is brave enough to question or think about anything… and worst of all knowing that if you were to say or talk about anything gay everyone would get uncomfortable and not join in on the conversation and wish you had said nothing… and then people will be like “you hardly said anything”, “you’re so quiet”, “you don’t talk much”, “are you shy”, “you’re boring”.

No bitch I’m gay and I don’t relate to nor am I really interested in any of the shit that you have been yelling to my face for the last hour.

I live for the number of straight people that don’t understand why this was written in this way.

It’s exhausting reading this right? Well that’s what’s it’s like for us gay people to have to listen to straight people’s opinions on things over and over and over