boobs and boob censorship and the point at which boobs are considered nude are so weird. you can see the whole damn boob without seeing the nipple and it’s like wow look at that boob! what a nice, safe boob. as soon as u see that little tiny sliver of darker skin that is part of the nipple everyone freaks out and its like HEY WOAH CONTAIN THAT NIPPLE U NAKED BOOB 

But meanwhile when men and/or children mostly only have nipples and little breast tissue around it, that is also ok to see.

Somehow it’s only the combination of breast tissue + nipple that is the problem, but not having either of those separately…

All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.

^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.

Spooky Shopkeeper: The price may be more than you expect to pay.

Me: Yes, I know how US taxes work, too.

Shopkeeper, increasingly exasperated: I’m trying to tell you that I’m evil and offering these wares with no regard for the harm they will do!

Me, also increasingly exasperated: I know what capitalism is too goddammit

this is one of my favorite posts

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

(me, my parents, my sister, and the baby are sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch)

baby, pointing at the light fixture over the table and signing "on": o.*

my sister: we actually can't turn that light on right now, because the lightbulb inside is burnt out! it needs a new one.

baby: ighbu.

sister: yes, lightbulb! granddaddy said after we eat he's going to climb up there on a ladder and change it, and then the light will come on!

baby: gadada! adda, uuu! ighbu o!

sister: exactly!

baby, signing "on" and pointing at the light and then my dad, with increasing urgency: GADADA ADDA UUUU. O.

my sister: we're going to finish eating first though, ok?

baby: nonono. O. gadada adda uuu.

[a split second goes by]

baby, pointing to himself: ba. adda uuu. ighbu.

me: you're going to climb the ladder and change the lightbulb yourself?

baby: dzyeah. *pointing to the buckle where he is buckled into the high chair* ububu.

me: unbuckle you? so you can change the lightbulb?

baby, highly businesslike: dzyeah.

*pronounced like "on" without the n

this comment passes peer review

— Andrea Dworkin

Fuck Around and Find Out

We have regular doors on either side of revolving doors because 492 people died at the Cocoanut Grove in 1942. We have radar for air traffic control and the Federal Aviation Administration because two planes collided over the Grand Canyon in 1956. Natural gas smells like that because it didn’t before it blew up the New London school in 1937 and killed around 300 people. We have a LOT of fire safety rules because of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. We have stronger cockpit doors because of 9/11 and stronger security for employees because of Pacific Southwest Flight 1771 and lighted aisles on planes because of Air Canada Flight 797.

I mean, that’s just off the top of my head after getting home from working twelve hours overnight. Two hundred and twelve episodes of @disasterarea-podcast, and nearly all of them involved the disaster in question spawning new regulations or rules to prevent the same thing from happening again.

actually i’d like to point out: we have safety regulations because people PROTESTED AND FOUGHT AND STRUCK AND DEMONSTRATED AND RAISED HELL. it took the bereaved families of those who died in the triangle shirtwaist factory years of campaigning for the government to pass regulations about fire and door locks. it took open warfare--the government was sending in troops, dropping bombs-- for miners in appalachia to get basic safety regulations. it takes parent groups and boycots and unions fighting cops in the street. it takes marches on washington. it takes a lot of journalism.

the government does nothing for the silent dead, the humble dead, the polite dead. a dead body is shoveled into the ground and forgotten by the next business quarter.

safety regulations are not written in the blood of silent, disposable victims. they’re written in the blood of those who split their knuckles and screamed their throats raw for a better world.

don’t ever underestimate the value of protest.

is anyone else on this hill or is it just me and sisyphus and kate bush?

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is such a weird theory because it's like there's a very obvious explanation for why middle school kids who didn't have dysphoria before might suddenly have dysphoria. Like huh weird I wonder what very obvious and widely known change that could cause kids to suddenly become very uncomfortable in their gender or sexual identity starts in between the ages of 10 and 14. Guess we'll never know. Must be peer pressure to *checks notes* become the only gender minority in your whole school singling you out for harassment by your peers. Couldn't be puberty suddenly giving you new body parts/bodily functions that are wrong for you.

#reminds me of when 'my child was Perfectly Normal until he got vaccines and Now He's Autistic'#no your child just got to the age certain social and developmental skills become apparent#and that happens to be a good age to give them certain vaccines (@dilfhershellayton)

Dude congrats on being the first person to have a new and interesting observation on this post. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. It's the desire to blame something external for who your child is because if you accepted the very obvious developmental explanation you would then have to admit that your child is a different kind of person than you instead of a mold-able mini me that you can force into your idyllic little nuclear family box you were imagining when you had them. Bigoted parents are terrified of their child not being exactly like them so they have to pretend that something like vaccines or peer pressure corrupted them. So much so that they'll put them through bleach treatments or conversion therapy or whatever in an attempt to fix them before they'll allow their child to be who they are.

Or maybe puberty generally makes kids uncomfortable with their bodies due to sudden changes both physically and hormonal/emotional that they can’t quite make sense of yet, and that’s completely normal.

But when you tell kids that feeling uncomfortable with the rapid changes in their bodies must mean their gender is wrong, they are more likely to believe this easy “explanation/solution” than being told “this happens, you’ll get over it after” because young teens are very bad at thinking long term and just accepting that it’ll likely go away with time.

We need everyone's help right now to protect the rainforest and Indigenous People

The Amazon Rainforest is under a massive threat. I know you've heard this a million times, but this is different. There is a piece of legislation that will decimate the rights of Indigenous people of Brazil, who have been protecting the rainforest. It's unfathomably bad. It has majority support. And they're voting tomorrow. As reported here, the Bill allows "the Brazilian government to find energy resources, set up military bases, develop strategic roads, and implement commercial agriculture on protected Indigenous tribal lands, without any prior discussion with the affected peoples."

The thing you can do—and I know this sounds overly simple—is sign this petition—and tell your friends to do the same: SIGN HERE.

As reported here, the Bill allows "the Brazilian government to find energy resources, set up military bases, develop strategic roads, and implement commercial agriculture on protected Indigenous tribal lands, without any prior discussion with the affected peoples."

Again, this bill has majority support. You may be wondering, why will a petition signed by people who don't live in Brazil make any difference? Because it will give those opposing it political air cover. It will show the world is with them.

But we need a LOT of signatures.

Please do this simple act and spread the word.

For those seeing this now in June 2023, this bill is likely from pre 2023 in the Bolsonaro administration. The new president Lula has put an indigenous woman in charge of environmental regulation and they seem to be trying to undo Bolsonaros actions in the rainforest.

Never forget!

The "and Ken" sign says so much. Not only do the police identify him as some crazily dressed guy just tagging along with an equally crazily dressed girl who just decked someone in the face, they also cuff him even though it seems like he hasn't done anything because he tagged along with his girlfriend even to get arrested.

He's an accessory even to a convicted Barbie. You do not separate a Ken from his Barbie even in jail. Ken is having the time of his life even in incarceration because he's there with Barbie.

An accessory to crime

HER BRAIN

Living here would fix me

It didn’t fix Barbie

With the announcement of the Harry Potter TV series, you will be made aware of the people in your social circle who are excited about it.

Now is a good time to stop knowing them.

The play here is fairly blatant.

Friendly reminder that JK Rowling is the executive producer for this show. So in addition to benefiting monetarily from its very existence, she will be an active participant in creating its narrative. I won't be watching it and I encourage everyone else to ignore its existence as well.

i don’t care about harry potter so i won’t be watching it anyway but you guys literally do not act like this about media made by genuine abusers and child rapists. like yeah you might condemn it but you don’t tell people to stop associating with people who watch it. why is this the one that needs a full scale boycott plus blacklisting of all its fans

^^^

I did not see this energy when the sewer clown child orgy movie came out

I did not see this energy when house of the incest show came out

I did not see this energy when drake's purple glitter pedo bait high school TV show came out

In India the age of consent is 18. There are talks to lower it to 16. Thoughts?

It depends. If it’s the age of consent to sex with people of similar age (eg two 16 yr olds, or at most a 16-17 yr old with a 18 yr old) then sure, that tends to be the law in a lot of countries to allow for the fact that teenagers want to have sex while still protecting younger teens from dubious consent with older people.

But if it’s age of consent for sex in general with anyone of any age then no, it’s already easy enough for grown men to have sex with teens, they don’t need the government to say it’s okay too.

ABSOLUTELY FALLING APART SCREAMING THAT THIS IS REAL HAHAHAHAHAHA