Hopelessly Imperfect

they/she - pan-ace tinyurl.com/BlackLGBTbiz

[palipunk-deactivated20260328]

Palestine Masterlist 

(this is a list of informative sources, materials, stores, charities, books, documentaries etc to better help Palestinians, learn about the Palestinian struggle, and educate yourselves on us as a people. This list will be added on to with more links as they are recommended to me.)

Introduction to Palestine: 

Decolonize Palestine:

Palestine 101

Rainbow washing 

Frequently asked questions 

Myths 

Al-Nakba (documentary)

The Question of Palestine (book)

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (book)

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (book)

IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding):

Quick Facts - The Palestinian Nakba 

The Nakba and Palestinian Refugees 

The Gaza Strip

The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 (Article) 

Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948? (article)

Donations and charities: 

Al-Shabaka

Electronic Intifada 

Adalah Justice Project 

IMEU Fundraiser 

Medical Aid for Palestinians 

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund 

Addameer

Muslim Aid

Palestine Red Crescent

Gaza Mutual Aid Patreon

Books:

A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine

The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge

Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean

The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique

From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948

Captive Revolution - Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of The Palestinians 1876-1948

The Battle for Justice in Palestine Paperback

Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom

Palestine Rising: How I survived the 1948 Deir Yasin Massacre

The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-1996

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples

Where Now for Palestine?: The Demise of the Two-State Solution

Terrorist Assemblages - Homonationalism in Queer Times

Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East

The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock

The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians

The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

Ten myths about Israel

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New and Revised Edition

Israel and its Palestinian Citizens - Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State

Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy

Palestinian Culture:

Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture

Palestinian Costume

Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution

Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora

Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing (Oriental Institute Museum Publications)

The Palestinian Table (Authentic Palestinan Recipes)

Falastin: A Cookbook

Palestine on a Plate: Memories from My Mother’s Kitchen

Palestinian Social Customs and Traditions

Palestinian Culture before the Nakba

Tatreez & Tea (Website)

The Traditional Clothing of Palestine

The Palestinian thobe: A creative expression of national identity

Embroidering Identities:A Century of Palestinian Clothing

Palestine Traditional Costumes

Palestine Family 

Palestinian Costume

Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, v5: Volume 5: Central and Southwest Asia

Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:

Jenin, Jenin

Born in Gaza

GAZA 

Wedding in Galilee 

Omar

5 Broken Cameras

OBAIDA

Indigeneity, Indigenous Liberation, and Settler Colonialism (not entirely about Palestine, but an important watch for indigenous struggles worldwide - including Palestine)

Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

Palestine Remix: 

AL NAKBA

Gaza Lives On

Gaza we are coming

Lost cities of Palestine 

Stories from the Intifada 

Last Shepards of the Valley

Organizations and News 

Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS)

Defense for Children in Palestine

Palestine Legal 

United Nations relief and works for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA)

National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

Times of Gaza

Middle East Eye

Middle East Monitor

Mohammed El-Kurd

Muna El-Kurd 

Electronic Intifada 

Dr. Yara Hawari 

Mariam Barghouti

Omar Ghraieb

Steven Salaita

Noura Erakat

The Palestinian Museum N.G.

Palestine Museum US

Artists for Palestine UK 

Muhammad Smiry

Eye on Palestine

[cuntess-carmilla]

The CDC claiming it's "encouraging" that 75% of the Omicron deaths from vaxxed patients were of patients with "4 or more comorbidities", was clearly meant to convey that only Very Sick People (aka disabled people) are at risk. Like, there's no fucking way to interpret that message other than as an attempt to reassure the able-bodied population that only people like us will die, so the CDC's ridiculous revisions to quarantine are Totally Justified (because fuck disabled people am I right? lol).

However, the fact that their official list of those comorbidities includes shit like depression, acne, BEING FUCKING SHORT, "obesity", autism, lactose intolerance, seasonal allergies, asthma, hypertension and such, is an example of what the disabled community means when we say that disability is just as much social construct as it is/can be biological reality, and that disability rights are human rights (not that they should have to include YOU for them to be HUMAN rights but we're painfully aware you don't see us as fully human so 🙃).

You can become disabled at any time! Sometimes not even because something actually happened to you, but because the state decided to deem you as such POST-MORTEM on paper at their convenience!

Are people whose only conditions are fucking acne, normalized visual impairments, seasonal allergies and lactose intolerance on disability benefits? Do they require more accessibility meassures than maybe help buying glasses or contacts or the occasional OTC antihistamine? Is someone gonna abuse or ostracize them the same way a wheelchair user or an autistic person would typically be? No! Obviously not!

But if you have just those 4 extremely common conditions, the state can use them to claim that your preventable deaths are "encouraging" instead of absolutely tragic and at the very least a sign that ill people should be protected more.

In order to serve capital, to justify lax meassures against the pandemic, they're going to lump you in with us with glee and they're going to let you die too. They can still utilize eugenics against you and claim your death was "encouraging". (Also why we insist on you trying so hard to separate yourselves from us being counterproductive.)

This is also what I mean when I say the medical establishment, even outside of psychiatry, as it exists now in most societies, is inherently oppressive. That doctors wield too much power over their patients, and that they're often more interested in serving themselves and capital/the state than serving regular people.

I've complained a lot about doctors refusing to diagnose or much less treat patients with invisible chronic illnesses out of convenience, but they can also weaponize diagnosis against you.

A doctor can decide that your life is lesser because you were fucking lactose intolerant, and that's your actual death sentence. Same way that doctors have been deciding on a whim to not treat disabled people during this pandemic (research the many cases of doctors placing "do not resucitate" orders on us without telling us or our families!) because they think our lives are less valuable than abled lives so they're just gonna let us die and save abled people only.

Now that resources are running out more and more, and the healthcare system is more and more saturated, now that the state is putting more pressure on them to prioritize capital over human lives, doctors are deciding that you don't even need to be Actually Disabled for your life to be worth less. If you have fucking acne, then you're an encouraging death because they said so. Welcome to our hell.

[cuntess-carmilla]

They're training you to see disabled deaths as acceptable without telling you that they're lumping your deaths with ours.

[unbossed-deactivated20251218]

[stream]

Close Enough (2020 - )

[utopians]

I hate myers briggs and it’s pretentious but I’m right

[utopians]

you think that the infinite spectrum of human personality and behavior can be narrowed down into 16 categories? bitch….. 16?

[utopians]

huh so evidently isabel briggs myers was also a racist (wrote a book abt a southern family who kills themselves after learning they have black heritage, this is framed as the right decision by the story for eugenics reasons) and her mother catherine who contributed heavily 2 the test was also a eugenicist so maybe their test to determine what societal role you should conform to and raise a child in accordance with wasn’t made with the best intentions

[butchfatty-deactivated20210203]

It’s also not based in literally any psychological scientific fact whatsoever. Maybe let’s leave the racist pseudoscience behind in 2021

[chaoticgouda]

[ID: Six hands clasping each other’s wrists in a circle, against a blue and cloudy sky. In the centre of the circle is the text “Wait, that’s a SYMPTOM?!”. There is text on each of the hands, as well. Starting at the top and going clockwise, they read “Autism”, “OCD”, “Dyslexia”, “Depression”, “Anxiety”, and “ADHD”. End description.]

[bunney]

not to be controversial but like……. there is literally no reason for any movie or show to have a rape scene in it. there is literally no reason to show that to anyone. and before you hit me with the “but it helps bring light to the subject!!!!! its better than being silent on the matter!!!!” find a better way. dont use a violent act such as that for shock value. there are way better ways to portray or shed light on that issue in media without forcing people to watch something so triggering.

[bumbleshark]

The Lovely Bones movie adapation is a grade-A example of this(leaving out rape in movies) working. Peter Jackson says it really well.

“The key event in Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones is the rape and murder of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, but in adapting the book to film, director Peter Jackson had several reasons for toning down the violent incident that sets the story in motion.

In the movie, we do not see any rape, and the murder is mostly implied. “There are artistic and there are moral reasons and there are practical reasons,” Jackson said in a press conference over the weekend in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Among other things, depicting the violence would immediately get the film an R rating. “We wanted to make a film that teenagers could watch,” Jackson said. “[Co-writer and producer] Fran [Walsh] and I have a daughter who’s very similar to Susie’s age. We wanted Katie to be able to see this film. There are a lot of positive aspects of this film, and it’s not something that I think I wanted to shield our daughter from. So it was important for us to not go into an R-rated territory at all.”

Then there are the moral reasons for omitting the graphic crime. “It would frankly make it a film that I wouldn’t want to watch,” Jackson said. “I mean, I would have no interest in seeing that depicted on film, and I would not want to see the film. Every movie that I make is a film that I want to see. It’s very important. I make movies that I know I would enjoy seeing in the cinema, and that would not be one of them.–  But to do anything that depicted violence towards especially a young person in a way that was serious, to me, I would have no interest in filming it at all. It would be repulsive.”

Stanley Tucci, who plays the murderer, said it was a hard enough role to actually play and they didnt even shoot that horrible scene in the book.

In a separate interview, Peter Jackson talks about how disgusted even story-boarding the rape scene went and failed to make it in the film. Some of the crew walked out of the room. The cast and crew also didnt want to subject the two main actors, Saoirse Ronan (who plays 14 year-old Susie) and Stanley Tucci (who plays Mr. Harvey, a serial killer of little girls), to the scene. They didn’t want Saoirse to experience that scene and it obviously affected Stanley as well. 

Reading a rape scene is really so much more different compared to people having to write it out, act it out, and really SEE it. I think the people involved in this movie did what I wish everyone did when handling this subject in just a graphic medium. And I would 100% recommend this book and movie. Both are equally powerful and it’s hard to describe.  

[mmmthornton]

Also : Fire Walk With Me is a walk through the life of a traumatized and abused Laura Palmer in the days before her murder and it manages to not have a single rape scene or shot of her sexual abuse in it. Instead we get to know the victim as a human being. I don’t think it’s confirmed but i strongly suspect this is thanks to the influence of David Lynch’s daughter, who wrote The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and is usually credited with bringing a LOT of humanity to someone who in any other work would just be considered the “dead girl” that inspires the male characters with her suffering.

[ingek73]

And if it does get filmed:

‘Yorick van Wageningen was so disturbed after shooting the rape scene with Rooney Mara that he spent a whole day locked in his hotel room crying.’

-girl with a dragon tattoo

[puttingherinhistory]

Not to mention the multiple actresses who have said that filming rape scenes have been legitimately traumatizing for them. Actors are people too who deserve protection from trauma in their field of work.

Also consider how many rape scenes from movies and shows, even if they’re depicted as gruesome, horrifying, and traumatizing, end up getting uploaded onto porn sites. No matter how you depict it, when it’s depicted in media in this much excess it’s still serving the function of normalizing it.

[actualteenadultteen]

The Hunger Games, Actual Teen style!

On the left, 15-year-old Josh Hutcherson.

On the right, 16-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.

Think how much creepier it would be to see them killing other kids when they look so squishy-cheeked and little.

[antauri-the-hadozee]

“Think how much creepier it would be to see them killing other kids when they look so squishy-cheeked and little.”

THAT’S THE POINT SUZANNE COLLINS WAS TRYING TO MAKE

[lumos-of-my-life]

Think about these cute squishy kids being forced into a romance in order to survive

[impuretale]

And the threat of these cute squishy kids being forced into prostitution after the games are over. 

[my-graceless-heart]

REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN WITH A REMINDER THAT FINNICK WAS 14 WHEN HE WAS REAPED/WON THE GAMES AND WAS FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION SOON AFTERWARD

[venusdryad]

wait the kids were forced into prostitution after they won???

[a-terf]

Some of the Victors were, especially if they were attractive to lots of rich people during the games. How do you think you pay off the parachute things people send you to help you win the game? Those books were so fucked up

[berrygoodindeed-deactivated2022]

That’s why I feel like actual teens should have been cast in the movie. It would have hammered in the message of the books so much more.

[lvlnarrative]

And if they had cast actual teenages, I’m sure they wouldn’t have focus so much on romance in the films. They would have focus on the horror of the hunger games, like they damn well should have.

[moved--306389]

The hunger game movies are the exact thing the hunger game books was trying to warn us about

[binaominagata]

Just going to add in a few other things that a lot of people seem to miss because it was either de-emphasized or cut entirely from the movies:

-Haymitch Abernathy was 16 when he won the Hunger Games, and the Capitol attempted to force him into prostitution as they did with Finnick and many other popular victors. He refused, and in retaliation, they gradually killed off everyone he loved one by one—his friends from home, his family, his girlfriend. He began drinking heavily at a young age to deal with the trauma of the Games, the loss of everyone he’d ever cared about, and subsequently having to continually relive the trauma of the Games in mentoring roughly 50 children, two each year, whom he’d then have to send to their deaths in the Arena. 

-The Capitol also attempted to force Joanna Mason into prostitution. She, too, refused, and like with Haymitch, the Capitol retaliated by killing off everyone she loved one by one. She alludes to this in both the book and the movie version of Catching Fire, not flinching when she enters the Jabberjay area of the arena because there’s “no one left” that she loves. The movies don’t really explore this, though, while the books do more exploration both with everything the Capitol has taken from her and the lingering effects of her PTSD from her imprisonment by the Capitol. 

-The only reason Peeta and Katniss weren’t forced into prostitution was because the Capitol was too invested in the “Star-Crossed Lovers from District 12″ narrative. 

-Also, Katniss spent the latter half of her first Hunger Games deaf in one ear and had to have her middle and inner ear reconstructed after the Games—the explosion at the Cornucopia permanently fucked up her hearing in that ear. She’s able to hear again after the surgeries but never quite the same. 

-And Peeta had a prosthetic leg! He was severely injured while fleeing the “Mutts” at the end of the Games and was bleeding out from his leg by the time he and Katniss reached the Cornucopia. Katniss gave him a tourniquet using one of her last two arrows to tighten it. Doing so saved his life, but by the time the Capitol doctors took them out of the arena, the leg was beyond saving and had to be amputated. Katniss finds this out in their “post-Games” interview with Cesar Flickerman. 

-Just generally the movies glossed over or completely cut a lot of characters whose experiences in the games left them physically disabled (Katniss’s partial deafness and Peeta’s lost leg being cut entirely, Beetee’s spinal damage from the forcefield leaving him wheelchair-bound being largely kinda glossed over) or with PTSD (Katniss and Peeta’s PTSD isn’t really explored that much, Joanna’s PTSD is pretty much skipped over entirely, Annie’s barely in the movies at all, Haymitch’s entire backstory is cut, the fact that Finnick is basically just constantly putting on a show and barely holding it together under the surface isn’t ever really explored, pretty much all of the addiction subplots including Haymitch attempting to quit drinking and Katniss starting to drink at one point and everything related to morphling are cut…). 

-Basically as “rough” as the movies are they sanitized the FUCK out of the Hunger Games and the world surrounding them, and that’s…not a good thing.

TL;DR: @isashi-nigami is completely correct, The hunger game movies are the exact thing the hunger game books was trying to warn us about.

[bundibird]

Two things:

The only reason Katniss and Peeta were saved from prostitution was timing. After their own Games, the rumblings of rebellion had really started to gain traction. All victors have to do a celebratory circuit of all the Districts, but Peeta and Katniss’s celebration circuit was being used by Snow as a “everything’s fine, please don’t rebel, we’re just a pair of teenagers in live” prop tool for Snow to try and supress the rebellion. Peeta and Katniss were much more useful to him as teens in love than they were as prostitutes. Then we went straight from there to the 75th Games, in which Peeta and Katniss were fighters. Between being used to quell a revolution and having the Quarter Quell go the way it did, there was no time for Snow to loan them out to people. But had the timing been different – had there been no rebellion or had Peeta and Katniss not been central to it or had it all been delayed long enough for the post-games celebrations to die out, then yeah, they would have been sold to the highest bidder just like Finnick was.

I actually thibk that the fact that the film’s focussed on the romance and the glitz and glamour and etc was… accidentally clever, on Hollywood’s part. They certainly didn’t mean to do this, but they 100% replicated the Capitol’s attitude to the Games. They made it all about the entertainment, all about the story and the romance and the drama. So many people would have watched those movies and been taken in by the romance plot, and the revolutionary plot would have been secondary. The social commentary wouldn’t have even registered. Even the fact that they used older actors for the teens – in the books, Katniss and Peeta are never seen in public without a full face of make up once they’re Reaped. Katniss undergoes a full beauty treatment and not only is she wearing make up that makes her look older and more mature, but so is Peeta. The Capitol didn’t want them looking like fresh faced babies, and neither did Hollywood. If you watch those films merely for the entertainment they provide, then congrats. You’re the canon target audience of the Hunger Games. Hollywood was never going to make a movie that focuses on the true horrors of such a story, the way it should. Especially when the social commentary in the Hunger Games is terrifyingly similar to a social commentary on our society as a whole. No, no - they were always going to focus on the romance and the glitz and the glamour and the heroism. Which is……. kind of poetic, really. That they went and did the exact same thing that the villains did.

[dressedindustandshadows]

THIS MAN ^^^ I wrote an essay about the lack of humanity in this book and man I should’ve read this first

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

The whole youthful and innocent vs older and sexy thing actually gets brought up at the end of the first book.

Cinna puts Katniss in a dress that is consciously designed to make her look much younger than she actually is, so as to play up the ‘teens in love’ angle they’re trying to sell the Capitol.

But the dress also has padding, so as to make her breasts and hips seem larger than they are, since she’s been literally on the verge of starvation for weeks, and wasn’t eating that much before that, and as a result she isn’t that curvy. Katniss is shocked by this, but Cinna explains that the dress was actually a compromise, because the original Capitol plan had been to give her plastic surgery.

Katniss then realises that none of the male tributes grew facial hair in the arena, even though several of them were old enough (note: she doesn’t say that all of them were old enough. Though Rue was the youngest, this suggests that there were other tributes who were young teenagers) and that something must have been done to them to prevent that from happening.

Also, it’s worth considering that Katniss and Peeta probably looked even younger than your typical sixteen year olds.

Katniss makes a big deal about how much they both get to eat at home, but if you read between the lines, Peeta lives off stale bread from the bakery and the odd bit of meat, and Katniss is essentially living the hunter gatherer lifestyle, supplemented by what they can buy from the baker and what they can get from Prim’s goat.

They’re much more well-nourished than the bulk of District Twelve, but Katniss can still easily spot the Career Tributes, because they’re the ones who have always had enough to eat. She’s one of the older (and therefore almost certainly heavier) tributes, but she still gets to hide in trees to get away from the Careers, because she’s significantly lighter than all of them.

Malnutrition tends to push back puberty. Katniss would probably be less well-developed than a modern teenager of the same age.

Notably, we don’t hear about her getting her period— or even wondering about that like she does with the facial hair— in the arena. Which, yeah, could be because of our culture’s habit of viewing menstruation as less kid-friendly than graphic child murder and mentions of prostitution, but it’s worth considering that in real life she might well have not started it yet.

While wearing the final interview dress, even with the padding to give her bigger breasts and wider hips, she says she looks about “fourteen at most”, which even accounting for Cinna’s borderline magical design skills, suggests that she probably tends to look like a younger teen even without it.

The Hunger Games would have been almost unbearably disturbing, if they hadn’t decided to cast almost all the characters as incredibly fit twenty somethings.

[ritualisticfireside1333-deactiv]

All of this. All of it.

[sugarcoatednightshade]

I completely forgot about that last part about the facial hair, and I never really thought about periods, holy fuck

[marvelvsmarvel]

Taika “REPRESENTATION MATTERS” Waititi

via Twitter, 1/26/21

[rhymeswithbacon]

[meeko-mar]

I’ve never actually seen what it looked like before Mt. Rushmore…it’s so saddening.

[verymememuchimpresswow]

P r e a c h

[danieljradcliffe]

I would love that. (requested by anonymous)

[lasshoe]

#one thing that’s lovely about alexis rose #is that she has elevated the art of being a drunk girl in a bathroom finding a five minute best friend #to the outside world and sobriety (via: @lulabo)

[queerlyraging]

I am affected.

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in elementary school. I’m an avid reader, always have been and always will be. My favorite books are the ones with lots of action, and fantasy, and different worlds full of different lives and different people. Whenever the characters fall in love I roll my eyes and turn the page. I don’t understand how they have time to fall in love when there’s a war going on.

I only like the historical and realistic fiction books without any romantic based plot. I love the Little House on the Prairie books, even if Laura does get married later. I care more about the lifestyle than anything, about learning how the prairie children live.

I finally get permission to read teenager books. They seem so mature and amazing and developed compared to the children books, but they have so much romance in them. What happened to preserving family bonds and forging strong friendships? I roll my eyes through slow kisses and huff at the silent pining for someone they can’t have. It seems so ridiculous.

My favorite pairs are shipped, but I never see how they could be in love. I never really have an OTP, but I treasure my BROTP’s and collect their friendships and sibling bonds quietly. I try and explain how I feel about the shipping to my friends, but they don’t seem to understand, so I give up and quietly listen to their talk of how much the characters love one another, defeated by the overpowering majority who scream about romantic love.

I don’t hate the ships, I just like the friendships better. I seem to be the only one who feels this way. I am isolated. 

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in elementary school. I really want to be friends with this boy. He is smart, he is funny, he plays sports, and we seem like we would be good friends. Most of all, he reminds me of my last best friend, before I had to move. But I am awkward, and easily influenced. My friends tell me I must like him. I don’t know how to deny it, so I agree and follow their advice.

I think it’s stupid, but maybe I do like him. Maybe that’s how all this works.

Our friendship is ruined. He doesn’t like me anymore, friend or otherwise.

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in middle school. Everyone around me talks about who they like, and why they like them. I think that I also like people - surely, liking someone means you really want to be friends, right? I ask. I’m laughed at. I choose a boy in my grade to like.

When I get older, I’ll like people, I decide. I’m just not old enough. For now, I’ll hide behind being unable to date until I’m older, and for now I’ll choose someone who checks all the boxes my friends seem to talk about. To me, it just sounds like what people want in a best friend, except they’re supposed to be cute.

I make a list of qualities, find a new boy every year in my classes. I choose someone I probably won’t see the next year, and am never very disappointed when I don’t have a class with them the next school year. I wonder if everyone does this.

The ‘crush’ of the year tells me he’s moving states after I tell him I like him. I’m relieved, instead of sad. All my friends comfort me, but I don’t really care. They find this odd, so I don’t talk too much about it. I hate feeling isolated.

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in high school. I’ve been a silent observer of the LGBTQ+ community since elementary school. For a long time, I wonder if I’m anything besides what society considers ‘normal’, if any of the identities apply to me. I wonder if how I feel is how everyone feels. No matter what I do, I feel different than everyone else about love, because I’m so indifferent to it.

I discover the asexual community first, and then I find the aromantic community. I’m surprised by how much I relate to it, but I’m also scared. This can’t be me, because then I wouldn’t be able to have the life I’ve always wanted.

Perfect family. Perfect husband. Perfect job. Perfect life.

I deny it. I tell myself I don’t actually relate, I just want to be different. I’m just caught up in a trend. I can’t aromantic, no matter how much I relate. I hate how I feel. I just want to be like everyone else. Why can’t I be like everyone else?

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in high school. All my friends are in relationships. I don’t really understand, but I try my best to be supportive. At the beginning of my sophomore year, my best friend tells me he likes me, and has liked me for awhile. I ask my big sister what I should do. Do I like him back? For the first time, I ask what romance feels like.

She tells me it’s like being best friends, but there’s just a little more. I wonder what that little more feels like.

We begin to date, and I’m uncomfortable. He’s my best friend. Nothing is different, except we hold hands, yet the concept of dating someone… it feels wrong.

I finally accept it. I’m aromantic, and that’s okay. We break up. We’re still best friends, and he still likes me. I am okay.

“being aromantic doesn’t affect you”

I’m in high school. I tell my friends that I’m aromantic. Each time I come out, it’s a new vocabulary lesson. It’s exhausting to find metaphors and explanations and definitions that they understand.

One of my friends told me she thinks it’s sad that I don’t feel romantic love. I’m too shocked to respond. She doesn’t even try to understand, and I’m hurt by her words. I am perfectly fine without romance - why can’t she see that?

I can’t tell one of my friends. I think he likes me and I don’t think he would understand, because he says things that feel wrong. I find out he’s a Trump supporter and quietly break off our friendship. I can never be too careful.

One of my friends says that I’ll find someone who makes me love. He thinks it’s just a joke, but I am hurt. None of my friends understand why I am mad. He means well, but it’s like he’s forgotten who I am.

I can’t tell my family, except for my big sister, but she’s far away right now. They wouldn’t understand, they would tell me I don’t know what I’m feeling. My little sister would try and remind me of every fake crush I had. My parents would tell me I haven’t found the right person yet.

“BEING AROMANTIC DOESN’T AFFECT YOU”

I’m in high school. I finally get to tell my big sister that I’m aromantic. I wanted to do it in person, and I’m not worried that she won’t accept me. After all, she’s LGBTQ+ too and the only ally I can have in my house, because I can’t trust anyone else not to shame me.

I tell her everything. She’s pokerfaced. Later that night, I hear her laughing through my bedroom walls. When I pass her door I hear what she is saying to her friend on call. She is making fun of me. 

She doesn’t think I can be aromantic, since I’m so young.

She thinks it’s an excuse, since I don’t want to date my best friend.

She says she felt the same way, and that I’ll find someone like her.

She’s laughing at my identity.

I’m heartbroken, betrayed, anguished. In my bedroom that night, I sob for an hour, spiraling, hating myself more and more. She was supposed to be my ally in the house, she was supposed to support me, but instead she laughed behind my back.

The next day, I can’t look her in the eye.

“BEING AROMANTIC DOESN’T AFFECT YOU”

I’m in high school. My best friend still likes me, and we’re still only best friends, because he knows that we can never be together. Sometimes it can be awkward, but mostly we avoid the topic. A month after we break up, he tells me we can’t be best friends anymore, because he needs to get over his feelings for me.

I go to my queer friend group and cry for ten minutes before my two hardest finals, because they’re the only ones who might understand. This is worse than when we broke up, because then it was mutual and now it is another rug swept from under my feet, another friend lost because of my identity.

He doesn’t understand why I am hurt, and I am too exhausted to put it into words. My friendships matter so much to me, but my friends don’t seem to always understand. 

I tell him to leave me alone. I need to process this by myself. He tells me that we can still be friends. I tell him to leave me alone. He finally understands how much I’m hurt, after I try to explain. I tell him to leave me alone. He tries to comfort me, and I ignore him. After all, he isn’t my best friend anymore, because he likes me and I can’t like him back, and this is just another friendship ruined.

I am affected.

I was in elementary school. I was a kid. I didn’t understand. I felt isolated and different because because nobody understood I didn’t have a crush. 

I was in middle school. I was a tween. I didn’t understand. I felt isolated and lost and confused because nobody seemed to feel the same way as I did.

I’m in high school. I’m a teenager. I don’t understand. I feel isolated and different and lost and confused and angry and hurt because nobody gives me representation and I’ve lost so many friendships because I finally have an identity I’m at peace with.

I’m going to be in college. I’m going to be an adult. I don’t think I will understand. I don’t know how I will feel because the future is uncertain and maybe one day nobody will need a vocabulary lesson every time I say I’m aromantic.

I hate the world for erasing who I am, for enforcing a narrative where I don’t exist. I hate that people tell me that since I can pass for straight, being aromantic doesn’t matter. I hate that people tell me they pity me because I can’t feel romantic love. I hate that I’m never represented. I hate that my potential representation only becomes discourse.

I hope for a future where romantic love is not the only narrative. I hope for a future where my affection with my friends is not seen as inherently romantic. I hope for a future where society acknowledges I exist and doesn’t ridicule my feelings and identity. I hope for a future where I can find canon representation and not have to guess. I hope for a future where I am accepted by those not exactly like me.

I hope I don’t hope for too much.

[you-oughtaa-know-deactivated201]

I just realized all the kids growing up with Spotify don’t have to spend money on specific music anymore, so they probably won’t have the memory of saving up money to buy their first CD and having it be something super cringy…like I think I saved up $15 for three weeks to buy the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack at Barnes & Noble when I was 9 and I was really proud of myself for that. Add your first CD you were way too proud of buying in the tags

[hopelesslyimperfect12]

My first cd was the Rugrats in Paris CD...And to make it worse, I’ve never watched the movie

[lesbianisopod-moved]

how come goyim will make 30k note posts about why not to use antisemitic memes but ignore the SEVERAL hate crimes that have been committed since chanukah started

[lesbianisopod-moved]

for those who don’t know

dec 8: an anne frank memorial in the united states is tagged with nazi imagery, including the hooked cross

dec 13: a member of a jewish community center is hospitalized after being attacked

dec 15: a hebrew elementary schools website is hijacked and text is replaced with violent antisemitism

[lesbianisopod-moved]

non jewish people are encouraged to reblog

[brainstatic]

Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.

[class-struggle-anarchism]

“Please don’t make me a joke… I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..”

 - Marilyn Monroe, last taped interview, days before her death

She deserved better than this

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Can I just also say, in addition to all this, that I’m still pissed off about the fact that Joe DiMaggio swooped in and gave Marilyn a Christian funeral before her Rabbi could return from a trip overseas? ‘Cause that shit is fucked up.

So many men who claimed to be in love with her, and not one could fucking respect her wishes, even in death.

[emily84]

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.””  — Marilyn Monroe

Also:

As one of the biggest Ella Fitzgerald fans, she literally helped desegregate her performances. Ella was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her race.

Ella Fitzgerald: “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt… she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.” thisisnotmyfairytaleendingg (Source: dmvnessa)

ALSO:

In August 1956, Monroe began filming The Prince and the Showgirl, with Laurence Olivier staring and directing. The production was complicated by conflicts between him and Monroe. He angered her with the patronizing statement “All you have to do is be sexy” and his attempts to get her to replicate Vivien Leigh’s interpretation. She became pregnant and miscarried during the production, which heavily worsened her depression and increased her drug abuse.

A L S O , I will never forget watching a documentary about her once and, speaking about her marriage with Arthur Miller, the narrator said, verbatim: “America’s Brain had married America’s Body”. Like, literally, because he was a famous writer, he was entitled to personhood; she, being an actress, and a beautiful woman, was reduced to being “a body”. I have never been more enraged with her portrayal in the media. If you want to be dismissive of her,  literally come for you.

[amuseoffyre]

She was also chronically ill her whole life: she suffered from endometriosis with pain so debilitating that a clause was written into her contracts accounting for the days when she would not physically be able to work during her periods.

She was on courses of strong medication, had invasive surgery to try and limit the damage caused, and despite trying for a baby numerous times, suffered many miscarriages because of her condition. The miscarriages especially sent her into deep depression, since she desperately wanted to be a mother.

There is speculation that the condition may have been one of the triggers in her drug dependency as well, because when you have endo, you will take whatever you can to stop. it. hurting.

Marilyn Monroe was smart and strong as hell in a world that saw her as a sexy doll and nothing more.

[wiciclesatmidnight]

She deserves better

[blamebrampton]

Marilyn was a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and had lifelong left-wing political views with a particular emphasis on racial equality. She formed her own independent production company that survived for several years and earned a credit as an executive producer on several films. Additionally, she was not only concerned for workers rights, she acted for them, using her own fame to stop staff being unfairly sacked from several of her films. She was a loyal, kind woman and her early death remains a great tragedy. Worse still, as OP notes, is the co-opting of her image by exactly the sort of people she would have loathed in life.

[gleefully-macabre]

She was a strong civil rights supporter (the Ella Fitzgerald thing wasn’t ONLY because she was a fan), and the FBI considered her leftist views so “radical”, they kept an open file on her. The public view of her as a “dumb blonde” is probably the only reason she wasn’t accused of being a Communist by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, which could have killed her career.

Though the cynical side of me thinks the studio may have greased a few palms since she was making them lots and lots of money they’d lose if she got blackballed.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[wetwareproblem]

Literally anyone who’s read the results of any other time this experiment has been tried. Why are we still trying to prove the concept?

[kedreeva]

Here’s the link if anyone wants it!

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic-income-seems-to-improve-employment-and-well-being/

Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being

Finland’s two-year test of universal basic income has concluded that it doesn't seem to disincentivise working, and improves recipients’ men

[kayasurin]

We’re still trying to prove the concept because in the West, Big Business and their owners, The 1%, are screaming at the thought of having to give up a little money so everyone can get universal income that supports life - meaning jobs either have to pay you to put up with the literal shit or people can walk away from them without becoming homeless.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Our entire system is basically based on people being so afraid of homelessness and starvation that they’ll accept any shit job for shit pay.

[jenniferrpovey]

Past experiments have shown that UBI:

Increases high school graduation rates

Reduces:

Domestic violence

Alcoholism

Emergency room visits related to mental health

Road traffic accidents.

All while not disincentivizing employment for most groups (the exceptions being high school students, who were able to focus on their studies, and new mothers…who were using it as maternity leave!)

People, for the most part, want to work.

UBI would allow us to expand the definition of “work.” If somebody can live off of UBI, then they can devote themselves to things which we don’t currently value financially such as the arts, raising children well, etc.

And if somebody wants to stay home and play video games all day…then so be it. Not that many will.,..and of those who do most will probably find some way to make that into their “work,” whether by providing play throughs and tutorials or competing seriously.

[jabberwockypie]

If somebody stops working all together as soon as they get UBI and stays home to play video games, they probably desperately needed a break.

There are so many people who are struggling with mental and physical illnesses, and chronic pain, who are still breaking themselves working because they don’t have another option - because it can take years to get on disability, and it’s not enough to survive on, so people keep going as long as they possibly can.

Even if it’s not a matter of disability, as such … people get burned out?

We’re not really built to do school and work with minimal breaks to the extent that we do.

Despite what our puritanical culture says, there’s no shame in needing a break.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[treethymes]