Melanin Monster @ccannon01 - Tumblr Blog

dear usamerican high schoolers looking for a way to resist fascism: sit through the pledge of allegiance.

no getting up. no looking at the flag.

everyone will be looking at you. you'll be sweating like a fucking hippopotamus. your teacher will sternly tell you to get up. you'll feel stupid and that maybe its not worth it because you're just a kid in a classroom. but I'm here to remind you that there are no real life consequences to detention. there are however real life consequences to resisting a thoughtless performance of nationalism.

vergess

If you are punished in any way for sitting through the pledge, please contact the American Humanist Association for legal aid.

Your teachers and schools are legally forbidden from punishing you for exercising your right to refuse this ritual.

Wait this is something that is still being done today? As in 2025???

vergess

Oh yeah, absolutely. Even as an adult, I'm "expected" to participate in the pledge when I'm working in schools (though of course I refuse to do so, and boy have I caused some problems with that).

The most recent pledge I personally saw was just in April of 2025, and I'd've seen more if I worked more closely with students.

audacityinblack

I was forced to write the pledge 25 times in 5th grade when I refused to say it one morning. They denied me lunch until I finished it. Ever since that day, I've boycotted the Pledge. I refuse to pledge allegiance to a country that forces children into compliance with nationalistic rituals.

creekfiend

thing I am proud of: when the doctor started going on a weird rant about long covid not being real I paused and listened to his nonsense for a bit and then very calmly said, in a polite and curious tone, "you don't believe in post-viral illness?" and he like. stammered a bunch and was like OH WELL I'M NOT SAYING -- I DON'T...I just think ..! and backpedaled awkwardly while I just sat there like :3c interesting :3c thank you so much for clarifying your stance on this :3c

creekfiend

an important skill for chronically ill people to develop is the ability to treat the doctor as though they are simply a person you are interviewing to find out how much they know about your condition.

nightmare-from-heaven

Holy shit op this is LITERALLY in the book 'Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It'. Written by a guy who did hostage negotiation and then tried doing business negotiation, and mopped the floor with industry experts.

I'm fortunate enough to have a primary care doctor who knows about hEDS, but it's occurring to me that the skills in this book could be medically life changing for chronically ill folks of all kinds. Like. Literally a matter of life and death, especially for BIPOC and/or fat and/or young people who are having their issues dismissed.

creekfiend

HMMM interesting!! will have to check this out

richardburbagehateblog

"All drugs are drugs" = a surprisingly radical position that will upset people right across the political spectrum

This means:

If you draw a hard line between "drug" and "medicine" based on current legality where you live (or any other criteria) you've gone wrong somewhere,

If you think legality and/or prescription status tells you all you need about a substance's capacity to do massive harm to someone's body, mind or well-being you've gone wrong somewhere,

If you think legality and/or prescription status tells you all you need about a substance's capacity to contribute meaningfully to someone's healing, function or happiness you've gone wrong somewhere,

If you think certain substances should be excluded from informed consent (either withheld or forcibly administered) you've gone wrong somewhere.

tepehkwi

it is so fucking exhausting and annoying how white women, including and maybe even especially in progressive and leftist spaces, continue acting like they are not themselves still beneficiaries of tremendous privilege simply because they endure sexist or misogynistic discrimination. being a woman does not excuse the fact that you are still white and you still reap the benefits of being white! you do not get to "but sexism!" your way out of being held accountable for saying and doing racist shit!

tepehkwi

never forget that WHITE WOMEN owned slaves, it was WHITE WOMEN who gatekept the womens' suffrage movement, WHITE WOMEN who not only participated in but also organized segregationist protests to harass and threaten children of color like ruby bridges, WHITE WOMEN who weaponize both their whiteness and their womanhood to threaten the safety and lives of black and brown people, WHITE WOMEN who had their own sect of the KKK, WHITE WOMEN who lied about black and brown men to get them murdered by lynch mobs, WHITE WOMEN who had significant influence in the eugenics movement, WHITE WOMEN who are just as complicit in settler-colonialist violence as white men are, WHITE WOMEN who receive preferential treatment to black and brown people of all genders seeking jobs and housing and education, and WHITE WOMEN who proclaim themselves to be the arbiters of feminism while forever ignoring the struggles of black and brown women and talk about white womanhood as if it is universal.

so forgive me but i am sick and tired of hearing about how WHITE WOMEN have it bad when WHITE WOMEN withhold their allyship until they can be certain that supporting the liberation of oppressed groups will benefit them in some way and are just as guilty of doing this as white men are.

tepehkwi

and it's WHITE WOMEN who are going to see this post and ignore it like they always do, that is, if they don't add unnecessary paragraphs of "well, actually" full of logical fallacies and outright misunderstandings of how the fucking world works...

missmayhemvr

a white woman caused the tulsa massacre, one of the worst incidents of racialized violence in US history. the destruction of the black wall street, an entire town, schools, churches, homes, all fucking destroyed because of a singular white woman. most likely based on a whole fucking lie.

white women repeatedly tried to throw black people under the fucking bus in pursuit of their rights. not just cis straight ones either, queer white people have habitually done that. if i listed all the black people killed or jailed due to random claims by petty white women i'd be here for hours, and that doesnt include all the indigenous people they have also harmed. white women still to this god damn day habitually use their position within this white supremist ass world to get black people harrassed, fired from jobs, killed and more. they infantilize themselves and play the victim card so fucking often there is a fucking name for the phenomenon "white women tears".

and none of this shit is exclusive to fucking republican voting white women, i've watched hella "progressive" white women do the "white women tears", ive watched hella "progressive" white women say derogatory shit about black people particularly black women. ive watched white transwomen dogpile and rumor mill bullshit about black and indigenous people on this fucking site for even suggesting something they did was racist. we have seen how white women have thrown around the accusations of brown people in x y or z fucking nation are just so used to being misogynist to shut down criticism for fucking decades on live god damn tv. the worst part is black people have been literally righting books , stories, and giving lectures on this for atleast 200yrs and white women have no bothered to fucking read a word of any of it.

luoravetlana

Not only was it a white woman crying that started those riots, it was the police department who helped her by deputizing the racist white mob, and this was just after Greenwood started to advocate against police racism. A white woman cried and it was used as a justifiable cause to punish and crumble an entire black community that still hasn't recovered. If the survivors weren't dead, they were left destitute and living in tents. A single white woman can be a hazard to an entire black community for generations to come.

dafancyuhinspiration

fforsythiaaa

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

syn4k

i like the phrases "it's not for me," "it's not my thing," and "i'm not the target audience" because they're the most concise way to express "this thing that you enjoy has merits but idgaf about it" without being aggressive

No matter how much I pass, I’ll never hide the fact that I’m a trans man. If I’m gonna be a queer elder, I gotta own the queer part. Kids gotta know that there’s a way. There’s a future. There’s a world where they belong because I’ve shown that someone like them has belonged here before. It’s possible to get old and wrinkly and die like every other person. That we’re not some special exception to life, an affront to the cosmos, or natures dirty little secret. We’re as much a part of earth as the trees and salt. That there is joy in being yourself fully, that there is love to be found when you make yourself know. That there is a future, but first I have to get there.

zxiqky-wicky

The phrase "living out of spite" has genuinely saved my life

manykinsmen

“men can’t be oppressed” -> men of colour

“white men can’t be oppressed” -> gay men

“heterosexual men can’t be oppressed” -> trans men

“cis-het men can’t be oppressed” -> intersex men

“perisex men can’t be oppressed” -> disabled men

“able-bodied men can’t be oppressed” -> neurodivergent men

“cis-het perisex white able-bodied neurotypical men can’t be oppressed” -> buddy let me tell you about wealth and class and homelessness and immigrants and minority languages and cultures and being a child and being an elderly person and and and

we can keep doing this all day but the reality of the world is that very few people don’t face any kind of oppression at all and everyone exists in a complicated, intersecting web where they have privileges over some people in some contexts and some others are have privilege over them in other contexts. no one individual is incapable of enacting oppression and if you think that about yourself you need to go away and interrogate that belief.

dearblackwoman

Healing is learning how to stop abandoning your needs

dearblackwoman

Healing is learning how to return to yourself

uniquezombierebel

chrissongzzz

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