reblogs, get your reblogs here

my official stance on leggings as pants, in two parts

1) leggings are not pants.

2) no one is required to wear pants.

There was a post on a social anxiety tumblr which basically went, ‘When I go to a nail salon and the person who’s doing my nails turns to a co-worker and start talking away and I start getting scared because I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

ourcatastrophe:

torayot:

I am tempted to say that it’s not social anxiety but racism.

I think it’s very probably both. I see a lot of people trying to avoid interrogating their shitty behaviour because it’s interconnected with their mental illness and I’m super sick of it. If you’re scared of people not speaking English, or speaking with an accent, or whatever, you can be both a) actually frightened and b) frightened because of your racism. mental illnesses aren’t just some creature from the planet Zorg that take over your brain and fill it with weird shit, they work with the fears and ideas and preconceptions that are there. and (because I just know someone is gonna go there): yes, I’ve lived with severe anxiety and panic attacks.

side note: this is one reason why I think the debate over whether terms like “homophobia” or “xenophobia” are appropriative/slanderous of medical phobias is misguided. people can and do have oppressive phobias.

quixotess:

youarenotyou:

Depression and Disability, Now With 100% More Unabomber « The Body Electric

transqueer:

Tiara reblogged my old post about depression, disability, and the social construction of mental health and posed the question of how it related to the Ted Kaczynski quote about antidepressants that was floating around Tumblr last week. In case you missed it, here’s the quote as it appeared on about 150,000 tumblrs:

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.

First, when I went to look up the quote, I realized it had been taken out of context and unethically edited.

Read More

Biggest reasons why I clash with leftist anarchists and balk at identifying as such-

ihavechortles:

wildunicornherd:

notyourkinddear:

lebanesepoppyseed:

I’m an atheist who recognizes and respects the cultural, social, holistic, personal, and anthropological importance of religion/spirituality, and I’m an anarchist who acknowledges and believes in the need for a people (especially one that has been oppressed) to have a nation and a land to call their own and to govern themselves on (or to get back the land that was originally taken from them).

If you’re looking at everything from a Western white perspective, I’d understand why you’d see religion and nationalism as being oppressive, since white religion and nationalism has been the most destructive force on the planet, but don’t ascribe that to everyone else. In fact, I’ve found religion and nationalism to be very important tools in fighting oppression and keeping an identity in the face of assimilation, imperialism, and destruction.

Saying shit like “I’m a citizen of the worlddd lol I have no countrrrrry *hipster expat bullshit*” and “UGH religion is ALL inherently so oppressive and horrible” is really fucking dismissive and belittling of a lot of people’s lives, histories, and cultures, and so fuck you.

Peoples who have never heard of Liberation Theology. Also, so much to the “Western White perspective”. Ugg… I really think that a lot of anarchism and other so-called “radical” movements are just another form of colonization.

My first impulse was to lunge at my screen open-mouthed so I could make out passionately with this threaad. YES! Tell me more about how white Western anti-religious sentiment bolsters colonialism! Let’s discuss the fuck out of liberation theology! Oh my god, your social critique is so pointed!

Maybe I shouldn’t be on Tumblr when I’m ovulating.

I dunno, my reaction was similar and I do /not/ ovulate, so. It could just be that this thread is that awesome.

“The really frustrating thing about the “Save the boobies” campaign and similar ones is that it gets it exactly backward. Often, the point of breast cancer treatment is to destroy some or all of the boobies in order to save the woman.

Saying that we should work to cure this disease because it threatens breasts is really upsetting. For starters, it suggests that women are worth saving because they’re attached to breasts, rather than the other way around. But worse, it tells any woman who’s had a life-saving mastectomy that she’s given up the thing that made people care about her survival. What a punch in the stomach.”
- Randall Munroe, writer of xkcd

“

—	Liz Fong - Google - Share if you oppose “Booberday,” the G meme of sharing… (via craftastrophies)

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

40 plays

nuditea:

if u can’t dance - spice girls [lyrics]

even when his eyes met mine
his slamming moves were out of time
can’t you just feel the groove
why don’t you move?
it’s easy, can’t you see?
take my hand and dance with me

if you can’t dance if you can’t dance
if you can’t dance if you can’t dance
if you can’t dance to this
you can’t do nothing for me baby

[Image description: Sepia photo of Mary Fields holding a shotgun with a dog lying near her feet.]

auntada:

“Stagecoach” Mary Fields (c. 1832-1914) was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she moved to the pioneer community of Cascade, Montana. In 1895, when she was around 60 years old, Fields became the second woman and first African American carrier for the US Postal Service. Despite her age, she never missed a day of work in the ten years she carried the mail and earned the nickname “Stagecoach” for her reliability. Fields loved the job, despite the many dangers and difficulties such as wolves and thieves (she was an excellent marksman, defending her route with a revolver and a rifle).

The people of Cascade so loved and respected Fields, that each year on her birthday they closed the schools to celebrate the occasion. They even built her a new house when she lost her home in a fire in 1912.

We called ourselves something controversial,” Jarvis says. “Did we do it to get attention? Damn right we did!” Nineteen year-old Miranda Mammen, who participated in SlutWalk at Stanford University, says the idea of “sluttiness” resonates with younger women in part because they are more likely than their older counterparts to be called sluts. “It’s also loud, angry, sexy in a way that going to a community activist meeting often isn’t,” she says.

“

—

SlutWalks and the future of feminism - The Washington Post

I fart in Loud Angry Sexy’s general direction.

If I never hear of slut walk ever fucking again it will be too soon.

Oh ageism in feminism. Does she really think those older counterparts weren’t called names like slut? Are not sometimes still called sluts? It isn’t a word that was just invented for 19 year olds. And, as so many people have pointed out, it isn’t a word everyone can reclaim or has experienced in the same way. *eyeroll*

I realize this is just one person but it makes me make a face so hard.

(via therotund)

I mean—what was hillary clinton called? or sarah palin or condi rice? or cynthia mckinney who was called a ghetto slut?

And just…I am SO TIRED of this “branding” being so much sexier and fun and angry than *community meetings* are. what they are saying is “branding” is sexier and funner than *talking to community so everybody has say and influence on what organizing goals look like*. this is building a foundation of their organizing *which is labelled as the future of feminism* of being sexy angry and loud is *more valued* than hearing from and being accountable to community.

so exciting.

(via radicallyhottoff)

Because of media attention, it is more likely that those who normally aren’t aware of local feminist activism will go to Slutwalk or be aware of it than an event which everyone except the participants ignore completely like Take Back The Night so it’s entirely likely that survivors of rape and abuse who aren’t already activists/feminists in the community will discover that they aren’t alone in what happened and there are people locally who will believe them, or there may be peer counseling or other options available.

But no, let’s not focus on helping survivors of rape/assault/abuse and instead let’s all focus on the words of young people who will likely regret what they said later on because they may still be extremely early in the learning process and finding their voice in feminism.

I mean, who the fuck cares about helping rape survivors when it might mean people will say ageist stuff because they’re ill-informed.

(via thefremen)

Seriously? Seriously? Wanting feminists to be aware of oppression that they are perpetuating is not NOT CARING ABOUT RAPE VICTIMS? Especially since there are a whole shit load of rape victims who belong not only to the general category of “rape victim” but also to “older” and/or “person of color” and/or “disabled” and/or “trans” and/or any other category that Slut Walk wound up having issues around. Critiquing an event - or something a person quoted in a public fashions says - does NOT indicate a lack of concern for rape victims and I AM PERSONALLY LIVID that you would go there. Because that’s bullshit.

And you know what? As a survivor of abuse and sexual molestation, I SAY THIS: fuck not being able to say something negative about a thing. That doesn’t mean the thing was without value. It means some people are tired as all hell of being erased and marginalized and told they don’t give a fuck about helping rape victims when they ask not to be erased. It means some of us who weren’t even erased still saw some issues and were deeply and frustratingly disappointed in the responses - and lack of responses - given to the concerns and critiques that were raised.

IT NEED NOT BE A SWOON. A thing does not have to receive universal two thumbs ups for it to be of value to some people. To posit that critiquing something someone said in a mainstream major news outlet, which is how mainstream feminism is communicated to a large portion of the population, to say that is actively ignoring the needs of rape victims is ridiculous.

(via therotund)

folks, let’s take a bow for therotund.

(via little-mouth)

so what i hear the fremen arguing is that marches can be utilized towards basebuilding and recruiting. which is true. anybody who is an organizer worth her salt knows this. but guess what—riots can be utilized towards recruitment as well, as can um…*community meetings*. and as organizers like angela davis show—there are some major problems with sustainability using riots as a tool of organizing. namely, the destruction of communities, but also the gendered prioritizing of men in action and the not addressing the practical *needs* of community.

the point is—there’s LOTS of ways to do recruiting—and there’s LOTS of ways to make recruiting less about *recruiting* and more about *building relationships*—which is an essential part of rebuilding new worlds. As this episode of This AMerican Life shows about Egypt--eventually the feel good exciting sexy shit is going to end and you’re going to be left with some really practical shit to deal with. And if you don’t have the tools and methods of communication down—how will that practical shit be dealt with outside of recreating what’s already been done—which is laregly what people were protesting to begin with?

distancing yourself from communication—and what’s more, positioning communication that has at its roots, community accountability *as not sexy, angry, or loud*—is problematic. to say the least. and positioning a “movement” that distances itself from community accountability as “the feminism of the future” is tiresome.

(via midwestmountainmama)

gwenfrankenstien:

[img: Barbara Gordon as Oracle, from an early Birds of Prey issue.

Text: “Y’know, a lot of the time it’s like you Batguys want me to hold on to the past because YOU can’t get over it. Understand— I HAVE.

I have a new life now, one I like— One that FULFILLS me. It’s not the SAME one I had before, but it’s GOOD. Maybe even BETTER.”]

[Image description: A gray cat poking its head into a glass of water.]

princessgrignet:

ALL THE TIME.