me, myself and I. Logged in based on which C2 I need to add stories to. (x) Man I have never known straight dude writers to shy away from putting out stuff like ‘my thinly-veiled self-insert goes on a mediocre adventure but more importantly ends up in a love quadrangle with these four female characters who are all incredibly hot to me’, but most of the lady writers I know get nervous if they write one (1) love story where *gasp* two whole dudes compete for the same lady’s love! (x) “Non-violence is a privilege to those who are not being directly subjected to violence.” — /white-feelings-for-charlottesville (x) “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.” — Samuel Johnson (x) 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 judgment of how difficult your life is. — noctis-nova (x) Equal Rights for others doesn't mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie. You know what’s messed up? People make fun of women for reading romance novels in which men are kind, chivalrous and sexually generous to the women they love, but men watching violent hardcore porn where women choke on dicks is considered normal, and ‘shaming’ someone for it is considered more taboo than the porn itself. After this Tuesday, we will at least have statistical proof of how racist this country is. #ElectionFinalThoughts — @Hari Kondabolu (o) Next time you’re ever tempted to ask why women don’t report sexual assault you can kindly turn on the tv, look at our president, and remember that man admitted that he sexually assaults women and over a dozen women came forward about it and he was still elected — @socialnetworkhell (o) Voting 3rd party is a good way to let marginalized groups know that your abstract principles are more important than their very real lives. — @Manglewood (o) So in Trumps America if you burn a flag you should be jailed but if you burn a cross you should be in his administration. Got it. — @MatthewACherry Donald Trump isn't even the worst part of this election. The worst part is that I'm now aware of how many awful people I co-exist with — @SortaBad (o) like i am definitely not the biggest fan of hillary clinton on a personal level but ive gained a whole new sense of respect for her because theres no way i could stand on stage next to a giant orange skittle yelling over me for this long and just keep my cool like she is her demeanor is so fucking admirable — jontaargaryens (o) It’s no coincidence that abortions go up when Republicans are in charge and down when Democrats are. The two biggest indicators a woman will have an abortion are that she is poor (75% of women who have abortions make less than $23,000 and half make less than $11,000), and had an unintended pregnancy (half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and 43% end in abortion). Want to guess which political party is more effective at reducing poverty and unwanted pregnancies? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the “pro-life” Party that in this last Congressional session alone fought to cut medical care for poor mothers and children, food programs for kids, and contraception coverage and access for women. — Hillary Clinton Is the Best Choice for Voters Against Abortion Don't forget to hate refugees as you set up a nativity scene. Celebrating a Middle Eastern couple desperately looking for shelter. — anon (o) American Christian: They took the Christmas decorations off of the Starbucks cups. Can you believe it? (o) Jesus was a homeless Palestinian anarchist who held protests at oppressive churches, advocated for universal health care and redistribution of wealth, before being arrested for terrorism, tortured and executed for crimes against the state, now go ahead and explain to me why he’d vote conservative. I’ll wait. — cutevictim K, but, James had a friend facing bigotry and he became an illegal animagus to help make that friend’s life better. Snape had a friend facing bigotry and he joined up with the bigots. Like end of contest, bye — th1syearsgirl (o) Unpopular Opinion Severus Snape abused his power as a teacher. No amount of past bullying, ‘you have your mother’s eyes’ quotes or death scenes can justify his verbally abusive tendencies towards school children. Just saying. — bookish-panda360@tumblr Okay so I see some people in the notes saying “he was just a tough teacher,” etc. and I have some things to say. I’ve had tough teachers. And it is true that tough teachers don’t take shit in their classroom and neither did Snape. It is true that they have high expectations and so did Snape. Are there times when Harry, Ron, or other students fell short of those expectations in Potions? Definitely. BUT. There is a difference between being a tough teacher and being an asshole who abuses his role as an educator. A tough teacher gives you the grade you deserve, and sometimes that is a failing grade, but they tell you why you failed and what you can do better next time. An asshole who abuses his role as an educator refuses to help you improve when you are clearly struggling in a class you don’t understand, yet are forced to take for at least your first five years of school. A tough teacher pushes you to do more than you think you can do because they see your potential and know what you’re capable of, often before you know it yourself. An asshole who abuses his role as an educator expects too much too soon, then punishes students for not knowing things they have no reason to know yet. Exhibit A: “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” he asks a first year who he knows has not had a magical upbringing!! A tough teacher knows they know more than you, but wants to help you learn. An asshole who abuses his role as an educator knows he knows more than you, but never lets you forget it and does not provide an environment in which every student can comfortably learn. A tough teacher will take points off anyone’s work for mistakes or for a poor job done (or will take points from anyone’s House). They will call anyone out in class if they’re being a little shit, and they will discipline anyone when it’s warranted. An asshole who abuses his role as an educator picks favorites, disciplines certain students and not others because of his own personal preferences, preconceptions, and grudges, and insults students for things that they cannot control. A tough teacher threatens you with detention if your poor performance in class continues. An asshole who abuses his role as an educator threatens to test your potion on your pet to see if it survives. IN CONCLUSION: Minerva McGonagall is a tough teacher. Severus Snape is an asshole who abuses his role as an educator. — siriusblackfoot@tumblr It’s so gross and hypocritical to frame food waste as a personal failing. Like, people are dying of hunger because someone forgot some leftovers at the back of their fridge and ended up throwing them away. Major chain grocery stores throw away millions of pounds of food because it’s “too much work” to donate it, and then poison it and destroy it when they throw it away to punish dumpster diving. Much like water waste - shaming a dripping bathroom faucet for wasting water, while hundreds of gallons get wasted in industrial settings. (o) If your job can be taken by a hypothetical unskilled, non-English-speaking illegal immigrant or outsourced worker, I’m going to give you some bad advice. I’m going to give you the same bad advice you gave millennials: stop whining, you’re not entitled to anything and nobody owes you a job. I’m going to give you the same bad advice you gave minimum wage workers: stop being lazy. Get a skill. work harder and you’ll move up. I’m going to give you the same bad advice you gave sexual assault victims: you should have made better choices and this wouldn’t have happened to you. And when you find that this advice is not helpful or even true, then instead of attacking your fellow worker, the one who’s willing to work for less than a legal wage to feed his family, maybe you should go after the structures of power that allow and incentivize your employer’s choice to relocate your job. — 21stgoddamncentury Native Americans: We're water protectors. Not protestors. Media: Nah, you're protestors. Neo Nazis: We prefer 'alt-right.' Media: *thumbs up* #NoDAPL — @SimonMoyaSmith “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” — Malcolm X (o) After years of casually using words like "feminazi" or "grammar nazi" we, as a society, are incapable of calling actual nazis "nazis." — @AliyaBhatia (o) What do you call the male version of a Mary Sue? The protagonist. — grimm-fairy (o) If a female character kicks ass, she’s overpowered. If a female character can’t defend herself, she’s unnecessary. If a female character acts nice, she’s boring. If a female character acts mean, she’s a bitch. If a female character shows no emotion, she’s heartless. If a female character shows emotion, she’s weak. What can a female character do without being criticized mercilessly? — moved-to-tinypancake Die. That seems to be the only thing female characters are allowed to do. — rottenbrainstuff (o) When I was in Ninth Grade, I won a thing. That thing, in particular, was a thirty dollar Barnes & Noble gift certificate. I was still too young for a part-time job, so I didn’t have this kind of spending cash on me, ever. I felt like a god. Drunk with power, I fancy-stepped my way to my local B&N. I was ready to choose new books based solely on the most important of qualities…BADASS COVER ART. I walked away with a handful of paperbacks, most of which were horrible (I’m looking at you, Man-Kzin Wars III) or simply forgettable. One book did not disappoint. I fell down the rabbit hole into a series that proved to be as badass as the cover art promised (Again, Man-Kzin Wars III, way to drop the ball on that one). With more than a dozen books in the series, I devoured them. I bought cassette tapes of ballads sung by bards in the stories. And the characters. Oh, the characters. I loved them. Gryphons, mages, but most importantly, lots of women. Different kinds of women. So many amazing women. I looked up to them, wrote bad fiction that lifted entire portions of dialogue and character descriptions, dreamed of writing something that the author would include in an anthology. This year I decided in a fit of nostalgia to revisit the books I loved so damn much. I wanted to reconnect with my old friends… …and I found myself facing Mary Sues. Lots of them. Perfect, perfect, perfect. A fantasy world full of Anakin Skywalkers and Nancy Drews and Wesley Crushers. I felt crushed. I had remembered such complex, deep characters and didn’t see those women in front of me at all anymore. Where were those strong women who kept me safe through the worst four years of my life? Which led me to an important realization as I soldiered on through book after book. That’s why I needed them. Because they were Mary Sues. These books were not written to draw my attention to all the ugly bumps and whiskers of the real world. They were somewhere to hide. I was painfully aware that I was being judged by my peers and adults and found lacking. I was a fuckup. And sometimes a fuckup needs to feel like a Mary Sue. As an adult, these characters felt a little thin because they lacked the real world knowledge I, as an adult, had learned and earned. But that’s the thing…these books weren’t FOR this current version of myself. Who I am now doesn’t need a flawless hero because I’m comfortable with the idea that valuable people are also flawed. There is a reason that most fanfiction authors, specifically girls, start with a Mary Sue. It’s because girls are taught that they are never enough. You can’t be too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid. You can’t ask too many questions or know too many answers. No one is flocking to you for advice. Then something wonderful happens. The girl who was told she’s stupid finds out that she can be a better wizard than Albus Dumbledore. And that is something very important. Terrible at sports? You’re a warrior who does backflips and Legolas thinks you’re THE BEST. No friends? You get a standing ovation from Han Solo and the entire Rebel Alliance when you crash-land safely on Hoth after blowing up the Super Double Death Star. It’s all about you. Everyone in your favorite universe is TOTALLY ALL ABOUT YOU. I started writing fanfiction the way most girls did, by re-inventing themselves. Mary Sues exist because children who are told they’re nothing want to be everything. As a girl, being “selfish” was the worst thing you could be. Now you live in Narnia and Prince Caspian just proposed marriage to you. Why? Your SELF is what saved everyone from that sea serpent. Plus your hair looks totally great braided like that. In time, hopefully, these hardworking fanfiction authors realize that it’s okay to be somewhere in the middle and their characters adjust to respond to that. As people grow and learn, characters grow and learn. Turns out your Elven Mage is more interesting if he isn’t also the best swordsman in the kingdom. Not everyone needs to be hopelessly in love with your Queen for her to be a great ruler. There are all kinds of ways for people to start owning who they are, and embracing the things that make them so beautifully weird and complicated. Personally, though, I think it’s a lot more fun learning how to trust yourself and others if you all happen to be riding dragons. — unwinona, The Importance of Mary Sue stop telling people to respect all opinions because guess what: if your opinion dehumanizes people, if it’s sexist or racist or ableist or transphobic or homophobic, then it does not deserve respect and neither do you Anyone who says they’ve never held bigoted beliefs is 100% a liar. We get older and we learn better and we grow more understanding of the world around us. Social justice is not a contest of perfection. It’s a process of growth. — hashtagdion (o) I grew up watching white people in films & learned to relate to their experiences, despite clear differences. You had to do this in order to enjoy any media at all. So when I hear white people say you can't cast Minorities because they are not "relatable," this means you cannot see us as equally human. — Hari Kondabolu (o) When watching a show I don’t think ‘Well politically correctly there should be two more minorities’ I’m thinking 'This is suffocating, this isn’t what life is like, why do i not exist, why do my friends not exist, what the fuck is with this idealisation of one type of person?’ — silversarcasm (o) Privilege does not mean that you’re rich, that you’ve had an easy life, that everything’s been handed to you, and you’ve never had struggle or to work hard. All it means is that there are some things in life that you will not experience— or ever have to think about— just because of who you are. — Franchesca Ramsey (o) For the last time, there is no "both sides" of an issue when one side is dehumanization and the other is survival. — @thetrudz (o) Telling kids to “stay in school” doesn’t do shit. If you want kids to stay in school, make sure school provides the necessary accommodations for disabled people, make sure no one is bullied at school, and make sure no one has to quit school to work because they’re poor. — theconcealedweapon (o) ACTIVISTS: WE R ANGRY ABOUT THINGS! — Nope! Brain studies find that concern for justice and equality is linked to logic, not emotion. By Lisa Wade, PhD A new study finds that people with high “justice sensitivity” are using logic, not emotions. Subjects were put in a fMRI machine, one that measures ongoing brain activity and shown videos of people acting kindly or cruelly toward a homeless person. Some respondents reacted more strongly than others — hence the high versus low justice sensitivity — and an analysis of the high sensitivity individuals’ brain activity showed that they were processing the images in the parts of the brain where logic and rationality live. “Individuals who are sensitive to justice and fairness do not seem to be emotionally driven,” explained one of the scientists, “Rather, they are cognitively driven.” Activists aren’t angry, they reasonably object to unjust circumstances that they understand all too well. (o) People often say ‘stop being angry and educate us’, not understanding that the anger is part of the education. — Amy Dentata (o) So apparently feminism is a hate movement. I’m sorry I don’t remember any feminists going on any shooting sprees because they were rejected by men or sending death and rape threats to blogger who pointed out sexism in video games. — nevillellongbottom (o) I love how people have turned the idea of not being a racist, ableist, sexist, trans*phobic, queerphobic fucknut into the phrase “political correctness”. Because it’s much easier to say “I don’t like all this PC stuff” than it is to say “I actually like my position at the top of the hierarchy and though I know that I’m only here because many people suffer every day, I don’t plan on changing it, because this is waaaay too comfortable.” — welcome-to-the-ball (o) Ever notice that the folks on that respectability politics/tone policing shit always say shit like “acting that way isn’t going to convince anyone to support your cause”. "Our cause" is asserting that oppressed people deserve the same dignity, safety, and respect that is afforded to those that oppress them. If you need to be convinced that that needs to be supported: you’re a slimy, disgusting nightmare of a person and you should feel fucking awful. — lookatthisfuckingoppressor (o) Every time someone, usually a guy, complains about feminists not experiencing oppression, I can’t help but see what they are really trying to say. "This is how men could be treating you, be grateful it’s only as bad as it is now." And that’s actually an attribute of abusers, I believe I read somewhere. To compare you to someone being treated worse and tell you you should be grateful you have it so good. It convinces the victim they should be silent in the face of their abuse. It’s literally an abuse tactic. Every time someone says something like, “You […] have never experienced oppression, and pray you never do, because this is what it looks like.” What they are saying is, “shut up, we could treat you worse if we wanted to.” — my-oddly-drawn-circus (o) Schrodinger's douchebag: A guy who says offensive things & decides whether he was joking based upon the reaction of people around him — @SallyStrange I think the reason why the phrase “I’m not like most girls” annoys me so much is because women have been conditioned to feel like they have to disassociate themselves from the female gender to be recognised as an interesting human being and if that isn’t fucked up then I don’t know what is — faxmachine (o) you are not a queen if your throne is made out of all the girls you stepped on just to make yourself look superior — blackfemalepresident (o) Virginity is just an idea, there is nothing to lose. Really, like nothing is getting lost. All of the things stay in place… If I think I’m missing them, I can actually go look for them, and I will find them. — Lindsey Doe in Sex Answers “biological sex is a social construct” doesn’t mean “chromosomes, anatomy, hormones, and genitalia don’t exist”. it means “these exist, but assigning roles, labels, and expectations to certain combinations of these characteristics is a social construct, and an unnecessary and pointless (actually harmful) one at that”. — c-maj (o) If gender is innate, if girls and boys are just naturally different and naturally like different things, want different things, show different behaviors, why do we have to put so much effort, so much work into separating them? If gender was innate it wouldn't have to be indoctrinated into anyone. Everyone would naturally pick what they want to pick, and every girl would pick the same thing while every boy would pick the opposite. We would never have to tell any little girl or little boy anywhere, “this is not for you, it’s for boys/girls — Children Don’t Have Gender Identity (o) You think getting friend zoned is bad, imagine your creepy male friend thinking you owe them sex. — @solomongeorgio (o) In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly whether physically, emotionally or both in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance! — Lamenting The Friend Zone, Or: The “Nice Guy” Approach To Perpetrating Sexist Bullshit (o) Women are not slot machines that respond to your kindness with sex. Thinking you are owed something for not being an asshole, makes you an asshole. But somehow, you have decided that you are the victim. Screwed by women’s decision not to screw you. — Desireé Dallagiacomo & Justin Lamb - "The Friend Zone" (o) If you’re a ‘nice guy’ to a girl up until you realize she doesn’t want to date you, then go on about how she’s a cold shrew that friendzoned you and how no girls date nice guys, like, nah mate, girls do date nice guys. You just aren’t a nice guy. You’re a passive aggressive beta with internalized misogyny and a serious victim complex. — Kathy Walker (o) My Least Favorite Trope (and this post will include spoilers for The Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Matrix, Western Civilization, and—cod help me—Bulletproof Monk*.) is the thing where there’s an awesome, smart, wonderful, powerful female character who by all rights ought to be the Chosen One and the hero of the movie, who is tasked with taking care of some generally ineffectual male character who is, for reasons of wish fulfillment, actually the person the film focuses on. She mentors him, she teaches him, and she inevitably becomes his girlfriend… and he gets the job she wanted: he gets to be the Chosen One even though she’s obviously far more qualified. And all he has to do to get it and deserve it is Man Up and Take Responsibility. — matociquala (o) The “friend zone” and unrequited love are not the same thing. Unrequited love is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, I am sad about that.” The “friend zone” is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, you have therefore wronged me.” Unrequited love is, “My unilateral crush is my problem.” The “friend zone” is, “My unilateral crush is your problem.” — jean-luc-gohard (o) The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster? — boringoldraphael (o) If you google image search “school boy uniform”, you get mostly elementary schoolers. (o) The sexualization of little Asian girls, especially Japanese, Korean, and Thai, is honestly so revolting. These girls can’t even wear their school uniform without being turned into some Western dude’s Lolita fetish. And you know what, “fanservice” anime where the girls are tiny and innocent but still highly sexualized doesn’t help the problem. It’s not “just a cartoon” because media doesn’t exist in a bubble. It contributes to the harm of real little girls because Western men go overseas to rape young girls who are being trafficked precisely because of the prevalence of this fetish through media. Stop the sexualization of innocence, school, and youth and let these girls have a childhood without gross adult men getting off to them. —homosuperior-jumped-the-gun (o) It's increasingly clear that for men, being drunk excuses anything they do. For women, being drunk excuses anything done to us. "He only hits her when he's drunk, he's not a bad guy" "What did she think was going to happen when she got drunk?" Heteronormativity is so ingrained in us from childhood that little girls can’t even recognise when they have little crushes on other girls, and that’s why being gay is seen as an “adult” thing; only when you’re old enough to reason critically are you able to recognise the crushes you had as a child. There’s no such thing as being too young to be gay, but there is such thing as being too young to fully understand heteronormativity. — lavabendinggemqueen (o) Same sex marriage isn't gay privilege, it's equal rights. Privilege would be something like gay people not paying taxes. Like churches don't — @Ricky Gervais (o) "you’re too young to determine your sexuality" said no one to the heterosexual teenager — damianmcgintleman (o) I'd be a liar if I said I didn't use "gay" as an insult when I was younger, but I also shit my pants when I was younger too. I grew up — Front Porch Step (o) in sixth grade my homeroom teacher caught this kid stephen saying, so he told the class that for the rest of the week, anytime you wanted to express something negatively, you could say, and it started out as a joke, where even this stephen kid was going around using it, laughing at it, not really caring. it was funny, i guess. but then one of his friends got a bad mark on a test and said, we had a blacktop recess and everyone kept saying, and when we got too loud doing groupwork and had to separate and work silently, everyone in the class kept muttering, and the weirdest part was that even though it was just a word we were using, even though it had nothing to do with stephen, and as everyone kept using “that’s so stephen,” all week, you could see stephen himself finding it less and less funny. and when my homeroom teacher found out about it, he sat everyone down and told us that it wasn’t okay to say “that’s so stephen” anymore. that the things we’d been blaming him for weren’t his fault and the things we’d been doing to him weren’t fair. he told us that stephen couldn’t help it that he was stephen. he didn’t choose to be stephen. he was born stephen. and that’s when it clicked. we all felt pretty stupid, i think, for sort of falling for it, but i’ll be damned if i’ve ever had a teacher get a lesson across so utterly and completely as mr. bernard did. it hadn’t even been the full week. — dashlit McFall versus Shimp happened in Pennsylvania in 1978. This guy named Bob McFall was dying. He had aplastic anemia and was circling the drain. If he didn’t get a bone marrow transplant, he would surely die. Well, Bob had a cousin named Dave. He was the only viable option for a successful transplant, but he didn’t want to give of his body to save anyone. Even his cousin Bob. They went to court. The judge found in favor of Dave. Because he didn’t think it would uphold the law of the land to force someone to give of their body, even if it meant Bob would die. Bob died. Now, since then, that case has been cited every. single. time someone has taken someone to court to try and fight for the right to use their body even though the other person has said no. The United State Supreme Court has upheld that no one has to give of their body to keep another alive. Regardless of circumstances, no one has been forced to give of their body to save another. They’ve used the 4th and 14th amendments to continue to guarantee a person’s right to their body granted to them upon birth. When people try to make the decisions for others based on their beliefs, people like Savita Halappanavar, Angela Carder.. in the case In re Klein, a guy had to fight to get his wife the aggressive treatment she needed to survive (she was in a coma) and had to fight against “prolifers” to save HER life over that of the fetus. In Curran v. Bosze, a mother didn’t want her twins to give bone marrow to save their brother. Their father wanted them to, the Illinois court said,”Nope. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.” Long story short? Even if someone will die as a direct result of your action (even if that action is INACTION) you are not obligated to give of your body for any reason to save the life of another. A fetus is not above the law. If you think it’s equal, then it needs to follow the law as equally as the rest of us. None of us can use someone’s body to keep us healthy and alive without their willing, continued consent. And that’s the law of the land. — Little bit of info about McFall vs Shimp (also known as “Why abortion will likely remain legal whether or not you like it.”) (o) Here’s the thing about being pro choice that people don’t get… (o) In a perfect world, no one would ever get pregnant if they didn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term. No one would ever be raped, contraception would always be available, affordable, and 100% effective. People who WANT to become pregnant would always be able to get pregnant easily, safely, and have affordable, safe, healthy pregnancies with no problems at all. But until we have a perfect world, access to legal, safe, affordable abortions is VITAL. Access to abortion is inherently part of protecting people’s bodily autonomy and allowing people to make the best choice for themselves in any given situation. But if you WANT to help create a perfect world, where unwanted pregnancies don’t exist and all wanted pregnancies go according to plan, here are things that will actually help: - Fact based comprehensive sex ed Things that don’t prevent abortion: (o) It doesn’t, like, matter? Whether or not we assign a fetus “personhood” doesn’t really change whether or not a pregnant person should be forced to give up their bodily autonomy against their will? Like, woman can not just STEAL men’s livers in the dead of night, even if they NEED those organs to live? The elderly don’t get to just go around and harvest the kidneys of the young in back alleys? You can’t just, like, kidnap a person and drain all their blood, even if it is used for life saving procedures. Fully grown, autonomous people with rights and consciousness are not allowed to violate the bodily autonomy of others, even in deadly situations. So…why would we let a fetus do this? Use another PERSON’S blood and uterus and stomach and everything else? For months? Altering their body irreparably? WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT? No. Abortion is first and foremost an issue of consent and bodily autonomy, and any argument about personhood is a distraction from that. — fandomsandfeminism Ultimately, it doesn’t even matter how brief or brutal the use is. Donating blood only takes a few minutes. Apart from some potential wooziness, there are few side effects for most people. We still don’t force people to donate blood even if people will die without it because that’s their call to make. The personhood argument is ultimately a red herring. — prochoice-or-gtfo (o) I live in a country that will demand a burial for a fetus but will also casually bulldoze an indigenous grave site for an oil pipeline. — @jpbrammer New Research Shows 0.6 percent of rape allegations are false. [source] (o) 8 Ways the Legal System Screws Rape Victims (o) But women can never be careful enough, can we? If we take naked pictures of ourselves, we’re asking for it. If someone can manage to hack into our accounts, we’re asking for it. If we’re not wearing anti-rape nail polish, we’re asking for it. If we don’t take self-defence classes, we’re asking for it. If we get drunk, we’re asking for it. If our skirts are too short, we’re asking for it. If we pass out at a party, we’re asking for it. If we are not hyper-vigilant every single fucking second of every single fucking day, we are asking for it. Even when we are hyper-vigilant, we’re still asking for it. The fact that we exist is asking for it. This is what rape culture looks like. This is what misogyny looks like. — What Happened To Jennifer Lawrence Was Sexual Assault (o) On rejecting men and rape culture. “We don’t know if Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. We don’t know if he was a “madman.” We do know that he was desperately lonely and unhappy, and that the Men’s Rights Movement convinced him that his loneliness and unhappiness was intentionally caused by women. Because this is what the Men’s Rights Movement does: it spreads misogyny, it spreads violence, and most of all it spreads a sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies. (o) Like, every man here is just like, "Oh, you remember Christine? Christine was crazy!" Every dude in here has that story. And I was like, "Why don't women have crazy men stories?" Why don't women have crazy men stories? I don't really hear them. And then I realized, I was like, "Oh." It's because if you got a crazy boyfriend... You gon' die. — Donald Glover also in gif form (o) I need to repeat this one more time, with feeling, to get everyone to understand what I’m saying. 20 percent of women are raped in their lifetime, but we’re actually concerned with less than one percent of the population, most of whom could still function with impunity through a trial and probably never face time in our current legal system for sexually violating someone else, being falsely accused of a crime which, most of the time, nobody is even actually falsely accused of. We, as a society, are more concerned about men being falsely accused of rape – something they are more likely to win the lottery than ever experience – than we are with women being raped every day. — Rebel Girls: Our “False Rape” Hysteria is Bullsh*t by Carmen Rios (o) Rape happens because rapists choose to rape. Period. No one deserves to be on the receiving end of such a vile decision. — Wagatwe Sara Wanjuki (o) People argued a lot about “separating the art from the artist” when Woody Allen’s molestation of his daughter became impossible to ignore. However, here’s the thing: almost all of Woody Allen’s work is about a thinly guised version of him. A lot of it is about some old weird creep having a sexual relationship with a younger, beautiful woman under a clear imbalance of power. How the hell am I supposed to separate the art from the artist? White people get so angry at the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people.” I will never understand why. Why are you so angry that you are being treated as actual human beings? You are not reduced to caricatures, but portrayed as characters. You are treated fairly, judged not by your skin tone, but by the ways that you carry yourselves, by your actions. Why do you want to experience racism so badly? It is not fun to be mocked, dehumanized, attacked, killed, incarcerated simply for daring to exist. It is not fun to know nothing of your history or family because it was torn apart, whether through distance or death. It is not fun to hear, at every turn, comments reminding you of your lesser status as humans. Do you really want to turn on the tv, open a magazine, watch a movie, play a video game, and not see yourself? Or, even better, to only see yourself as a criminal, as a drunk, a mocking stereotype, or as someone to be killed off? Or would you rather see fleshed out, well-written characters with lives and personalities and feelings? I know which I’d rather pick. If I were a white person, the phrase, “You cannot be racist towards white people,” would be the best thing I could ever hear. — thedeathcats (o) minority racism towards white people is at most an inconvenience. a singular experience where their race works against them. a truly escapable type of experience because after it, they return to a society tilted in their favor. in fact, even during the experience, they never leave it. they never lose the advantage. white racism towards minorities is systematic and destructive. we get jailed, shot dead, have our rights ignored, our rights slashed, neighborhoods targeted, job opportunities decreased, healthcare options constrained and more. all these things work together to create a understandable hatred towards whites. a hatred born out of pain, experience, oppression and disenfranchisement. a hatred that makes way more sense than white racism which is born out ignorance. a hatred that is fueled by the knowledge that whites, even those who swear to not be racist, by their actions and words perpetuate the system of oppression. their words of solidarity ring hallow. — dglsplsblg #YesAllWomen because the odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067, while a woman's odds of being raped are 1 in 6... yet fear of sharks is seen as rational while being cautious of men is seen as misandry. — katieanne46 (o) it’s so weird that men can make endless misogynistic comments and not have to reassure people that they don’t hate women but when women, especially those in the spotlight, talk about things concerning women they feel an overwhelming need to constantly reassure the world that they don’t hate men, that they love men. and by weird i mean a cultural norm to demean women and overvalue men. — floozys (o) "High maintenance" is a great way to make a woman who puts tons of effort into her own life sound like a burden on a man. — Chloe Shane Rape is the only crime on the books for which arguing that the temptation to commit it was too clear and obvious to resist is treated as a defence. For every other crime, we call that a confession. — prokopetz (o) it genuinely baffles me that men don’t want women in positions of power because “they’re slaves to their hormones/emotions” and yet one of the first lines of defence when it comes to rape cases tends to be “it’s hardly his fault look at what she was wearing how could we expect him to control himself” — asriels (o) I remember the day I realized all those “funny” videos and clips from shows like Jerry Springer and Maury of young teen and pre-teen girls talking about their promiscuity and describing their older male sex partners to a booing audience were basically videos of child rape victims being degraded, mocked, and blamed for being sexualized and raped by much older men. — misandry-mermaid The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. — Noam Chomsky (o) theroguefeminist: all of us have been unlearning problematic things - it’s really malicious and in bad faith to purposefully dig up old posts by someone that do not reflect their current opinions and attack them over it out of context samanticshift: and stop taking a tone of superiority as if you’ve never said problematic things before. none of us were born radical and well-educated. Feminism is having a wardrobe malfunction. (o)
I was always taught by my mother, That the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are. (o) Feminism is not about who opens the jar. It is not about who pays for the date. It is not about who moves the couch. It is not about who kills the bugs. It is not about who cooks the dinner. It’s not even about who stays home with the kids, as long as the decision was made together, after thinking carefully about your situation and coming to an agreement that makes sense for your particular marriage and family. It is about making sure that nobody ever has to do anything by “default” because of their gender. The stronger person should move the couch. The person who enjoys cooking more, has more time for it, and/or is better at it should do the cooking. Sometimes the stronger person is male, sometimes not. Sometimes the person who is best suited for cooking is female, sometimes not. You should do what works. But it is also about letting people know that it is okay to change. If you’re a woman who wants to become stronger, that’s great. If you’re a man who wants to learn how to cook, that’s also great. You might start out with a relationship where the guy opens all the jars and the girl cooks all the meals, but you might find that you want to try something else. So try it. — 4 ignorant delusions people have about feminism by MIRI MOGILEVSKY (o) "I’m everything feminists hate." An unbalanced social, political and economic structure that breeds inequality by strict adherence to expectations of gender roles, race and sexuality and that negatively impacts people by enforcing and reinforcing these restrictive narratives? Or did you just mean to say that you’re obnoxious? — geekandmisandry It’s taken me a long time, but at this point I genuinely believe that much of this “GEEKS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH” rhetoric is little more than patriarchy’s bespectacled wingman. It excuses the pain that systems of power exert on children by promising little boys future dominion over little girls. It is deeply and massively fucked. — What (Else) Can Men Do? Yesterday, Marvel released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers by Nick Spencer, Jesus Saiz, and Joe Caramagna. It’s a pretty boilerplate (albeit beautifully depicted) story of a rejuvenated Steve Rogers back in the field…right up until he tosses an ally to his death and declares “Hail Hydra” in a final page splash. The whole thing is intercut with flashbacks to his childhood of a neighbor inviting Steve’s mother to a Hydra meeting, thus implying that Steve was indoctrinated as a child and has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along. This is comics, right? Unleash a shocking twist to get readers to pick up the next issue! Make everything All-New All-Different for a few months until things settle back into the status quo! Have a character behave so incongruously that fans just have to know why! Except. Except this is different than having Superman be a jackass to Lois and Jimmy on the cover of some Silver Age issue of Action. This is different than a kiss or a death or a resurrection. This is even different than the usual “wildly out of character” stunts that would normally have readers up in arms, like Batman using a gun. Quick comics history lesson: Captain America was created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a superpowered, super-patriotic soldier fighting the Axis forces. He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, inCaptain America Comics #1—which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement. You probably already knew that, but I’d invite you to think about it for a minute. In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we’re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice. And Simon and Kirby—born Hymie Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg—were not making it lightly. Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political. Ever since, Steve Rogers has stood in opposition to tyranny, prejudice, and genocide. While other characters have their backstories rolled up behind them as the decades march on to keep them young and relevant, Cap is never removed from his original context. He can’t be. To do so would empty the character of all meaning. But yesterday, that’s what Marvel did. Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know how comics work. He’s a Skrull, or a triple agent, or these are implanted memories, or it’s a time travel switcheroo, or, or, or. There’s a thousand ways Marvel can undo this reveal—and they will, of course, because they’re not about to just throw away a multi-billion dollar piece of IP. Steve Rogers is not going to stay Hydra any more than Superman stayed dead. But Nazis (yes, yes, I know 616 Hydra doesn’t have the same 1:1 relationship with Nazism that MCU Hydra does) are not a wacky pretend bad guy, something I think geek media and pop culture too often forgets. They were a very real threat that existed in living memory. They are the reason I can’t go back to the villages my great-grandparents are from, because those communities were murdered. They are the reason I find my family name on Holocaust memorials. They are the perpetrators of unspeakable, uncountable, very real atrocities. It’s easy, especially if you’re not Jewish, to think that anti-semitism is a thing of the past. It’s not. It flies under the radar, mostly, until suddenly it doesn’t: with graffiti in Spain, hateful party games in American high schools, vicious threats being flung at Jewish journalists for criticizing Trump. With physical attacks—with deaths—in France. Nor is neo-Nazi rhetoric, which hews closer to 616 Hydra’s shtick, a goofy make-believe thing. Not when the Republican presidential nominee spouts fascist ideology that echoes Hitler’s rise to power and spurs a literal rise in hate crimes against Muslims. But writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort are more concerned with making this “something new and unexpected”; with having “fun” and getting readers “invested in Hydra characters.” Because what’s more fun than downplaying genocide? I’m not going to pretend to be cool here. I’m emotional. This is emotional. Captain America isn’t even my usual guy to get incandescently angry over the erasure of his coded Jewish history— that’s Kal-El, the Moses of Krypton—but reading this comic made me feel sick to my stomach. Reading the flippant responses of many non-Jewish readers—including friends—has brought me to tears. Somehow a community that gets up in arms about whether or not Batman has a yellow circle behind his logo seems to think that being angry about this is stupid, or indicative of a lack of experience with comics. So let me be very clear: I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever. I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait. I am angry because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines. I am angry because the very real pain of the Jewish community has been dismissed since this news leaked on Tuesday night as “Twitter outrage.” If this story doesn’t hurt you? Good. I’m genuinely glad. I don’t want anyone else to have the gorge rise in their throat when they read the entertainment news. I love comics. I don’t want them to make people feel angry and betrayed. But understand that not feeling that way comes from a place of privilege, and don’t dismiss the concerns of those of us who are upset just because you have the luxury not to be. I’ve been trying to think of how to finish this post, but I don’t think I can say it better than my friend and fellow Panelteer Sigrid Ellis did here: And knowing that this wound is temporary, that it’s for the sake of sales and money and a story beat, that just makes it hurt more, not less. How little we must matter, the people who needed Steve to be the defender of the underdog and the weak, how little we must matter if betraying us for a story beat is so easy. How little must we matter. The people who created Captain America, and Superman, and countless other heroes like them. The people who need him. The people whose history and suffering and hope, as we stood on the brink of annihilation, gave you your weekly entertainment and your fun thought experiment, 75 years later. I hope it was worth it, Marvel. — tsfrce An Education {9 x Rose} I went looking for a fic version of "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" where Nine was John Smith and Rose was his companion, and which took place at Farringham. Couldn't find one. Started writing. Simple as that. @teaspoon [complete] A Sky Without Zeppelins {10.5 x Rose} In a newly sealed off alternate reality, a chameleon arched fully human Ten meets a very different Rose Tyler after being left behind by his Time Lord self and the Rose he once loved. This is their story. sequel: A Sky Without Stars A mysterious object falls to Earth, ejected from the newly formed Time Vortex, burying itself in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. At first it seems harmless, but soon enough all hell breaks loose. It's up to the team at Illuminate to try to figure things out before it's too late. With Lumin still recovering from his last go around with the Vortex and Donna seven months pregnant, it's up to Rose and Jonathon, Martha and Tom, Renee Pascal and Captain Jack Harkness to save the day, with a little help from their alien friends and a precocious, sentient whale. As The World Falls Down {9 x Rose} Rose Tyler rarely speaks. She is invisible. One day, she decides to take a walk down a tree-lined road to meet the madman that lives at the other end. Bored To Death MultiVerse {Eric x Sookie} which started with Bored To Death @wordpress What if Eric and Sookie's first meeting at Fangtasia had gone differently. Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space {10 x Rose} And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. [complete] Coffee Girl {Seto x Serenity} It began with a simple need to escape, but with her it became so much more. Can you fall in love with a girl when you don't even know her name? [complete] Darkness @mediaminer {Sesshomaru x Kagome} Kagome finds herself trapped in the dark after a cavein, but she isn't alone. A mysterious man helps her find more than just the exit. sequel: To Shed a Little Light @mediaminer Kagome has a dirty little secret that she doesn’t want to share…but she’d like to know what the secret is, too! Or who, to be exact. [complete] Disillusion, by Hermione Granger Harry Potter went down in history as the man who destroyed the magical world. He got a Nobel Prize for it. [complete] Frivolous Sentimentalities {Sesshomaru x Kagome} If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, what galaxy are youkai from? Because Kagome would really like to know. [complete] From Birth {Sesshomaru x Kagome} From the moment he saw her he knew she was his - too bad they'd decided she was meant for someone else. [complete] Frozen Fire {Robb x Daenerys} Eddard Stark offered her a deal. Safe return to the Seven Kingdoms but in exchange she would need to marry his son, to keep her under watch instead of killing her like Robert wanted. She accepted because she believed she could work on her plans from within. She could turn the Young Wolf in her ally. But she wasn't expecting Robb Stark not to be like the men she knew. Girl in the War Who says you can't fight evil and be pretty? A Girl!Harry AU, starting with Rose Potter's first year at Hogwarts. Healed How I wish things had happened for Dany and Drogo after sacking the village of the Lhazareen. His Fire {Jon x Daenerys} They were both outcasts in Winterfell. That didn't matter because they had each other and would always have each other. A retelling of ASOIAF if Daenerys lived as a ward at Winterfell. I Think I Love You {Atobe x Sakuno} When Atobe asked for her help so movingly, how could she say no? But Sakuno didn't realise the mess she was getting into when she agreed to pretend to be his girlfriend. Worse, she's beginning to think he's not so bad after all. Could she actually be falling for yet another impossibly arrogant boy? Leap of Faith {alt!9 x Rose} Hiding from the Family of Blood, the alt!Ninth Doctor turns himself into John Smith via the chameleon arch and with his companion Toshiko Sato, takes a job at Torchwood. He clashes with everyone he meets and Rose Tyler, the beautiful young director of Torchwood Field Operative Training and the daughter of his boss, is no exception. Love Addicts {Rui x Yuuki} He's always had a bit of a Prince Charming complex, attracted to women in their hour of need, so what is he to do when he witnesses his friend, Nishikado Soujiro, breaking the heart of the kind and innocent best friend of Makino Tsukushi? [complete] Naruto: Myoushuu no Fuuin A seal had managed to defeat and imprison the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the strongest demon to ever exist. It was just ink on paperor a stomach, as the case may beand it held so much power… 'Yeah,' Naruto decided 'I gotta get me some of that.' Never Ever Land {Bulma x Vegeta} A young Bulma embarks on an unexpected adventure with Goku, Krillin and a certain orphaned Prince. Not The Reunion I Was Hoping For The Doctor wasn't expecting a blonde woman in a suit to burst into the TARDIS and tell him he was real. [complete] Of Direwolves and Stags {Arya x Gendry} "I have a son, you have a daughter. Let us join our houses." Arya Stark, the wolf lady of the North, was now promised to Gendry Baratheon, the heir to the Iron Throne, the eldest son of Cersei and Robert Baratheon. Other People's Pets Rose decides to keep the Dalek instead of Adam. The Doctor is not amused. Absolutely cracktacular! [complete] Play Date {Orihime x Kenpachi} Yachiru invites Orihime to Soul Society for a play date, but Orihime ends up getting more than she expected out of the Eleventh Division captain, Zaraki Kenpachi. Funny and sexy — basically smut with little redeeming social value. [complete] Seducing A Saiyan {Bra x Goten} It takes determination and ingeniousness to seduce a Saiyan, something Bra Briefs has in spades. Will she be able to seduce Goten into her bed? Not if he has anything to say about it. [complete] Silence AU story, set four years after ROTS. Darth Vader has become the Empire's very image of death and destruction. But a fortuitous encounter with a little boy will shake the until then rock solid foundations of his Darkness and hatred. [complete] Sunny With a Chance of Laxus Lucy has a static electricity problem with her hair. Laxus has a shopping cart full of condoms and meat. Plue is drunk. What could go wrong? Everything! But that's why it's beautiful. The Nightlands Azor Ahai. The Prince who was Promised. The Stallion who mounts the world. Many different names for the same thing. AU: What if Rhaego had lived? The Old Man and the Sea {Mako x Chuck} "Why blue?" He asks finally, picking up a lock of her hair, "people think of the Kaiju when they think of blue," he says. "It's a reminder," she tells him. "It reminds me of the ocean," he admits. [complete] The Onigiri Tastes Best Under the Summer Sun A story chronicling Sakuno's misadventures as she works her first summer job and interacts with various schools while trying to retain her precious, precious sanity. [complete] sequels: Valentine's Day is for Sluts & Sakuno's Question of the Day The Paladin Protocol {Sheldon x Penny} Every journey has to start somewhere. This one began when Penny found an alternative to paintball, and Sheldon dusted off an old skill. [complete] The Song of Rhaego Fireborn I sing a Song of Khal Drogo, a khal among khals, the first khal to cross the sea. I sing of Khaleesi Daenerys, the mother and daughter of dragons. I sing the Song of Rhaego Fireborn, brother of dragons. Drogo/Dany, One sided Jorah/Dany. Unspeakable Beauty {Harry x Luna} A/U after DH, EWE. Luna Lovegood is the Ministry's newest Unspeakable, and Harry's work as an Auror brings them into close quarters. What will happen when The Boy Who Lived Twice can't stop thinking about The Girl Who Lives In Her Own Universe? Vulpine Not entirely serious story. So, performing a summoning technique without a contract lands you with your most appropriate summon? Naruto sees someone summoning while still in the academy, and gives it a go. [complete] When Seasons Collide Set during the celebration at the end of Journey's End, the group gets a visit from the past. Told through Rose's eyes. A bit of a crack!fic, although I'd still like to think that it could have happened. [complete] Wolf Moon {alt!9 x Rose} Start with one happy, well-adjusted Rose Tyler living her life in the parallel world at age twenty-nine. Add one top of the line TARDIS with an attitude and a relationship problem with one angry, annoyed, crotchety old alternate Doctor who shouldn’t exist but does. Shake well. sequel: Hunger Moon The psychic attacks of the Monoc'teru on the population of Pete's world sidetrack the Doctor and Rose's search for the spheres of Thessalameka, the second assignment on their quest to save the fabric of reality from unravelling forever. Set ten years post-Doomsday in a world where Journey's End never happened. |
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