Έλευθερία

"In a ‘post-race’ country like America where nothing and no one is racist, where people are more..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:00:51 -0400

““In a ‘post-race’ country like America where nothing and no one is racist, where people are more likely to believe in UFO’s than in institutional bias, which does back flips to obfuscate the operations of white hegemonic power and therefore ensure its continuance, anyone seeking to expose white supremacy or battle it is in for some serious uphill. You will be attacked. You will be censured, usually by your own community. People will say that you are obsessed with race and that even mentioning white people in the context of white supremacy is itself racist. These days the average person doesn’t even have to be taught not to bring up white supremacy. Here in our country, as in Mordor, everybody knows not to say the dark lord’s name.””

- Junot Diaz, Facing Race 2012 (via artactivistnia)

beautifuldurtyrich: dohertypeter: dohertypeter: things girls are made to feel ashamed of- having...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:23:47 -0400

beautifuldurtyrich:

dohertypeter:

dohertypeter:

things girls are made to feel ashamed of-

having periods

choosing what they want to wear on their body

wanting to/not wanting to have sex

putting boys in the ‘friendzone’

standing up against misogyny

ruining a boy’s life by telling the police that he raped her

i could go on

abortion

having hair on their body

not appreciating catcalls

not appreciating chivalry

having control over their own fucking body

. Not wanting to have kids
. Being a lesbian
. Natural hair
. Having a lot of guy friends
. Not laughing at woman in the kitchen jokes
. Crying

Basically living.

queenlisasimpson: Things that I find gross and sexist about marriage When the dude asks team...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:28 -0400

queenlisasimpson:

Things that I find gross and sexist about marriage

When the dude asks team brides father for her hand in marriage

When the father gives the bride away

When the bride is supposed to take the husband’s last name

Also a bonus points for things I find gross and sexist about proposals

When a guy tries to pressure his partner into saying yes by proposing very publicly and then she is vilified and he receives sympathy if she says no

bryanthephotogeek: Samantha Bee is a role model.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:25 -0400

bryanthephotogeek:

Samantha Bee is a role model.

"I’m going to keep this short because our lives are short: it’s time for sex workers to do some..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:21 -0400

“

I’m going to keep this short because our lives are short: it’s time for sex workers to do some killing of their own. We need to kill this myth of the righteously aggrieved client once and for all. It’s a myth that enables men to blackmail, rob, rape, and kill sex workers. It is a shame when you pay for a service you don’t receive, but it happens all the time in all varieties of the service industry, and it shouldn’t ever foster vengeful attempts at singlehandedly policing every worker in an entire field.

I propose that from this point forward, we don’t let the letters “TER” go uttered even once without launching into a recounting of the information above. That we support and encourage our colleagues while they explore ways to work without reviews, or at the very least with reviews on sites acting as alternatives to TER. That we create our own alternatives. That we recognize and reject vampiric pimps in all their forms. (As Melissa Gira Grant once put it, Elms successfully “jockeyed to take the abusive middleman’s place.” Jason Itzler, the man who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from famous New York escort Natalia, praised Elms as “the most influential man in the prostitution business in America.”) That we don’t let a single client bemoan the risk he takes by submitting to a screening form when escorts are, indisputably, disproportionately, and aggressively targeted for arrest, police violence, extortion by friends and family, abuse from violent men posing as clients, and life-ruining stigma when outed. They do not suffer a fraction of what we suffer. That lie ends now.

Clients sometimes lose money. Sex workers regularly lose their lives. How should we rate that reality on a scale of one to ten?

”

- Charlotte Shane

“The Big Ripoff: TER, the Texas Murder Acquittal, and the Myth of the Vulnerable Client”

(via sexworkerproblems)

"Heteronormativity isn’t just about the presumption that everyone is heterosexual. The expectation..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:18 -0400

“Heteronormativity isn’t just about the presumption that everyone is heterosexual. The expectation that boys woo girls feeds into your mind the expectation that relationships are necessary for fulfilment, and you are less than if you are not having particular kinds of sex with a particular, and a particular kind of, person at particular intervals. It’s about what Lauren Berlant calls the love plot, in which love is produced as a generic text enabling society to interpret your life as following certain conventions. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you’re supposed to want. You’re not encouraged to think about what you want in relationships, if anything, so much as you are encouraged to fit a script. Heteronormativity messes things up for everyone, straight people included.”

- Tossing the script of desire | Zero at the Bone (via brute-reason)

Have I already reblogged this? Don’t know don’t care.

(via queercore)

Wow. Relevant.

(via thegoddamazon)

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:14 -0400

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’:

acidshenko:

canadian-communist:

Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?

Most people haven’t heard of him.

But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.

His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.

He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his “business transactions” as philanthropic and scientific efforts under the banner of the “International African Society”. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.

Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Its bad to “say racist things” (sometimes), but quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.

Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. Its 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for example serves to re-inforce American anti-Socialist propaganda, but Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind – this is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.

When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.

There’s a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking who’s interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny minority of people were eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict no less). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15 million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.

You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture doesn’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.

Leopold was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But this doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.

Tony Bourdain referenced this on his program about a week and a half ago. The mention wasn’t very lengthy, but it was enough to make me actually look it up.

I was absolutely horrified.

givemeajobplease: This was a man, dressed as a plant, making...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:19:11 -0400

givemeajobplease:

This was a man, dressed as a plant, making pigeon noises at people walking by. I said hello, asked if it was okay to take his picture, and then asked why he was dressed as a plant. He said, “I’m just working through some stuff. Thank you for asking. No ones asked yet.”

marciellesmusings: sowouldfinnick: inspirationbyinvitation: Ma...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:01:36 -0400

marciellesmusings:

sowouldfinnick:

inspirationbyinvitation:

Male feminists

Why the fuck doesn’t this have eight million notes? Get it together, tumblr.

Signal Boost!!!

"Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s),..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:01:33 -0400

“

Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s), especially considering most doctors here won’t perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don’t become bankrupt over medical bills — those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the “Christians.” If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn’t the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?

Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s about controlling women, period. It’s about sticking your nose in other people’s business. It’s about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One — even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You’ve just gone and made it up about “life beginning at conception.” Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women’s uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

”

- Michael Moore: My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain (via veruca-assault)

fuzzwald-the-penguin: lovinovaries: It bothers me that the intelligence of animals is measured by...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:01:01 -0400

fuzzwald-the-penguin:

lovinovaries:

It bothers me that the intelligence of animals is measured by how willing they are to obey the commands of a human.

same goes for students at schools

I think about this post a lot

The Fresh Ten Commandments: The Fresh Ten

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:00:44 -0400

The Fresh Ten Commandments: The Fresh Ten:

nevver:

You shall treat all people with respect regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, or national origin.

You shall not kill, assault, nor intimidate with threats of physical violence.

You shall not rape, sexually coerce, nor intimidate with threats of sexual violence.

You shall cultivate intellectual curiosity, be open to new ideas, and respect the scientific method.

You shall not cheat, nor cheat others out of what is rightfully theirs.

You shall not lie, deceive, nor spread lies about others.

You shall not steal, that is to say take or use what rightfully belongs to another person in a manner that causes harm. (Stealing is a trickier concept than it once was. How do you say yes to Fair Use and no to software patents?)

You shall keep your promises.

You shall not waste natural resources nor pollute the shared environment.

You shall take responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

The Fresh Ten

"For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:01:08 -0400

“For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as ‘Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays’ rather than ‘Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,’ try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether…

Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richardson are not the “stars” of the Steubenville rape trial. They aren’t the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim, the ‘lasting effects’ of whose graphic, public sexual assault are ignored. Small wonder, then, that anyone would find themselves on the side of these men—these poor young men, who were very good at taking tests and playing sports when they were not raping their classmates.”

- Mallory Ortberg of Gawker, critiquing CNN’s disgusting response to the Stuebenville rape trial verdicts.

Her commentary is spot on.

(via cognitivedissonance)

"I have had several sexual partners in my life, but I won’t tell you how many, because it doesn’t..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:01:48 -0400

“I have had several sexual partners in my life, but I won’t tell you how many, because it doesn’t matter. It could be in the thousands, and it wouldn’t make me any less cool to go to lunch with. It wouldn’t make me any less terrible at ironing a shirt. It wouldn’t make me any less likely to love shitty reality television I know is bad for me. Who I am and what I offer to the world has nothing to do with how many sexual partners I’ve had, and I’m not interested in justifying myself to someone who will have already judged me anyway. As much as I’d like to comfort you with some notion that I’ve been impossibly chaste up until the moment I find the “right” man to “complete” me in some way, I must tell you that I haven’t been waiting for anyone. I’ve been living my life exactly as I want to since I’ve become sexually active, and my choices weren’t made to impress an arbitrary committee of judgmental assholes.”

- Charlotte Green, “I Am A Slut” (via cantuliketheshampoo)

sarlett: You’re Probably Not Really a Nice Guy (x) The same...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:01:29 -0400

sarlett:

You’re Probably Not Really a Nice Guy (x)

The same goes for girls, it doesn’t matter how kind you are to him or how pretty you makes yourself-it isn’t a jerk for not noticing you or not being attracted to you because you were his FRIEND.

"Margaret Atwood once wrote that “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:00:59 -0400

““Margaret Atwood once wrote that “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,” but it’s even more complicated than that. Women aren’t just afraid that they’ll be hurt; they’re afraid that they’ll be hurt and they’ll get blamed for it.””

- Ana Mardoll (via runningwiththegnomes)

theredshoes: michellelegro: Sometimes your Daguerreotype...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:00:38 -0400

theredshoes:

michellelegro:

Sometimes your Daguerreotype boyfriend might be a Daguerreotype girlfriend.

explore-blog:

Women lived in germ-ridden camps, languished in appalling prisons, and died miserably, but honorably, for their country and their cause just as men did.

The untold stories of women who dressed and served as men in the Civil War

Always up for genderfuckery.

Gay Innuendo and Awkward Harry Potter References: alexandraerin: geekykristie: A trans woman will be playing a trans...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:00:50 -0400

Gay Innuendo and Awkward Harry Potter References: alexandraerin: geekykristie: A trans woman will be playing a trans...:

alexandraerin:

geekykristie:

A trans woman will be playing a trans woman on Elementary.

More and more I feel like Robert Doherty was at some point a hardcore Sherlock fan who became fed up and went “I SHALL MAKE MY OWN SHOW WITH WOMEN AND MINORITIES EXPLORING ADDICTION STIGMA, ALSO MYSTERIES.”

Bless him.

I haven’t read past the first sentence of this post. I can’t. I am too choked up to go further. Oh my gosh, I am sitting here crying.

A trans woman will be playing a trans woman on Elementary.

"I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been..."

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:01:35 -0400

“I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been inextricably linked to their value as an individual, and that no matter how encouraging your parents were or how many positive female role models you had or how self-confident you feel, there is an ever-present pressure that creeps in from all sides, whispering in your ear that you are your body and your body defines you. A world where, from the time of pubescence on, you can feel the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze, and not just from your male peers but from teachers and sports coaches and the fathers of the children you baby-sit, people you’re supposed to respect and trust and look up to, and that first realization that you are being looked at in that way is the beginning of a self-consciousness that you will be unable to shake for the rest of your life.

Even if they are never verbalized, the rules of bodily conduct for females become clear early on: when school administrators reprimand you for the inch of midriff that shows when you lift your hands straight in the air or youth group leaders tell you that the sight of your unintentional cleavage is what causes godly young men to fall, you learn that your body is dangerous and shameful and that it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that is acceptable to everyone else. You learn that your body is a topic of public debate that everyone is entitled to weigh in on, from a male classmate telling you that those jeans make your ass look huge to the male-dominated United States Congress dictating the parameters that rape must fall within to be considered legitimate. To be a woman, and to live life in a woman’s body, is to be held to a set of comically paradoxical standards that make you constantly second-guess yourself and jump through a million hoops in pursuit of an impossible perfection.”

- Stop Catcalling Me | Thought Catalog (via moonjock)

Words I think we need

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:01:22 -0400

amber-and-ice:

steptomegetburntliketoast:

rhazade-waterbender:

radiantbutterfly:

Schrodinger’s Douchebag: One who makes douchebag statements, particularly sexist, racist or otherwise bigoted ones, then decides whether they were “just joking” or dead serious based on whether other people in the group approve or not.

Permission to use it?

OH MY GOD

I nearly spit water all over my keyboard. This is both hilarious and perfect.