Andrei Sharov aka Андрей Шаров (Russian, b. 1966, Moscow, Russia) - Untitled from Back series, 2015 Paintings: Oil on Canvas

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
occasionally subtle

#extradirty
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titsay

Janaina Medeiros
will byers stan first human second
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Love Begins
ojovivo
hello vonnie
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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i don't do bad sauce passes
Sade Olutola
cherry valley forever

izzy's playlists!

oozey mess
seen from Colombia

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@insertoriginalitywhere-blog
Andrei Sharov aka Андрей Шаров (Russian, b. 1966, Moscow, Russia) - Untitled from Back series, 2015 Paintings: Oil on Canvas
Accept yourself as you are right now. You’re a wonderful creation and deserve your own unconditional love.
Be proud of where you are because you’ve come a long way.
(via abundancefocus)
Overthinking is the biggest cause of our unhappiness. Keep yourself occupied. Keep your mind off things that dont help you. Think positive.
you: learning, growing, thriving
me: high on cough medicine, shirtless, eating applesauce
Beating the rush hour traffic.
#ShesAGent Captured by @thestreetsensei (at Wall Street)
Where were you when the most important news broke
@pinkpowderpuff we must watch this asap
S. LaFontaine aesthetic
Hey young ones
This is a request.
Learn your queer history. Learn about AIDS. Learn about how the leadership of this country looked away and did nothing to help our community for years. Learn about how they joked AIDS was god’s punishment for being gay. Learn about how, in the community, everyone was touched. Everyone lost someone. Learn how the AIDS crisis gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. Learn about how that crisis brought the community together after two decades of infighting. Lesbians took care of gay men who were dying. Found families were everywhere. Our history is too important to allow our politicians to sweep the horrible awful legacy of inaction under the rug.
Learn your history kids. Think about the people who died to make your life now, as a young queer person in the world, a whole lot better than it was back then.
YES
Learn about how bi men were blamed for the epidemic by both straight and gay people, and especially for its “leap” to those innocent straight people.
Learn about how Newsweek publicly blamed bi men for the epidemic in 1987, calling them “the ultimate pariahs” and “amoral and duplicitous and compulsive.” How Cosmo did the same two years later, promoting the popular stereotype of bi men as dishonest spreaders of AIDS.
Learn about how bisexual activists like David Lourea and Cynthia Slater were at the cutting edge of safer sex education, bringing it into bathhouses and BDSM clubs in San Francisco in 1981, when doctors were still calling it “a rare gay cancer”. Or like Alexei Guren, in Florida, organizing healthcare outreach to Latino married men who have sex with men.
Learn about how it took two years of campaigning to get even the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly “New AIDS cases and mortality statistics” report),
Learn about the women who got HIV, both cis and trans, who often had no resources or support. And the incredibly high risk trans women faced for HIV even in the late 1990s, and how difficult it still was for them to access healthcare.
Learn about how bisexual activists like Venetia Porter, of the Prostitute’s Union of Massachusetts and COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), were the ones who first advocated for both cis and trans women, and injection drug users, with AIDS.
Learn about how Cynthia Slater, who by then was HIV-positive, organized the first Women’s HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard in 1985.
Learn about how bisexuals are still erased from HIV/AIDS history. How frequently we are told that we were not affected by the epidemic, that we are less oppressed as a result, that we did not participate in this movement or in the larger movement for gay rights. That we were not demonized, that only gay men were disowned or refused cemetery plots for having AIDS. How our erasure is used against us.
Look up the die-ins. Groups of dozens, HUNDREDS, literally laying on the steps of hospitals and breathing their last because hospitals wouldn’t take them and their families wouldn’t either.
Look up Ryan White, an 11-year-old boy who got HIV through a faulty blood transfusion in the days before reliable testing and was denied an education out of fear he’d infect other kids.
Do you know what AIDS was, in those dim days? My mom worked in a hospital. An AIDS patient was brought in and immediately put in the same isolation room they’d use for stuff like SARS, smallpox, and anthrax. Entering his room required that you enter another room first and take off all your clothes. A fresh set of scrubs would be given to you. Then you had to triple-glove, double-boot, double-mask, double-gown–yes, a surgical gown just to enter the room–and when you left you did all this in reverse and then got a decontaminant shower. Nobody knew how this disease was spread.
And the people. In charge. Did NOTHING.
When older queer activists speak, loves, LISTEN. Our history is short and foggy and all too often appropriated by straight people for brownie points. It’s not all the repeal of DADT and getting married.
Are You Being Ableist? You Might Be Surprised
So I had a really unpleasant experience on Saturday night - a woman harassed me in a movie theater because of my guide dog and her perceived notion of “blindness.” I was going to blog on it, and I still might, but the whole issue got me thinking about something related that deserves discussion.
Ableism.
It’s not talked about as much as other “-isms” (racism, sexism, etc). Some might say it’s because it happens less, it’s less prevalent, etc. But I don’t think so. I think people need to talk about it way, way more than they do now, and in a very different.
When most people think of ableism or discrimination against disabled people, they think of distinct, extreme, obvious things - disabled people being rejected for jobs they are qualified for, for instance. And while that happens, I don’t think the average person realizes the ableism that occurs in every day life.
Here’s an example from my upsetting encounter Saturday night.
After being harassed by a woman who was accusing me of faking my disability and threatening to call the cops to the theater, a worker approached me and asked me for “proof” that my dog was really a service dog. I informed that asking me for proof is illegal in the US as many service dog users self-train their dogs and wouldn’t have “proof.” She assured me she believed me and was on my side, but if she was going to report the woman to her manager, she knew her manager would ask if she got “proof” from me first.
Sounds logical, right? I mean, she was just trying to protect me.
Except not really.
I had done nothing wrong. I was within my rights to have my service dog. I hadn’t even complained about the woman harassing me yet. *I* was the one being attacked - and yet, *I* had to provide ID and proof that I was disabled/my dog was a service dog. If the woman had called the police like she threatened, she would have been the one in trouble, not me. If the theater was really on my side, they would have stood up to the woman, regardless of my “proof.”
Sadly, there’s this odd perception that people “pretend” to be disabled to get perks.
No, really, there is. After telling this story, I had numerous people tell me “Well, they have to ask for proof because people take their non-service dogs places.” I won’t say this NEVER happens, but I will say I doubt it happens very often. And, on top of that, even service dogs can be asked to leave any facility if they are misbehaving/clearly a threat.
But, as I said, lots of people seem to think abled people fake disabilities. I’ve been yelled at numerous times for “faking” my blindness because I “looked” at something. Well, yeah, I did look - because I have some remaining vision. But people don’t know that. They don’t know that 90% of blind people have some remaining vision. And before they ask questions, they make decision. They place themselves as the morally correct and attack the person they assume is doing something wrong.
This opens up a whole topic of invisible disabilities that I don’t think I can go into right now. But, just FYI, invisible disabilities are a thing.
So you’re probably think “Well, I get all that - I wouldn’t do that - I’m not ableist.” But more there’s more to it than that.
This post is getting lengthy, so let’s get into lists. Okay, here are a few ableist things lots of people do with no ill will or intent that are still offensive/inappropriate.
1. Using phrases like “What are you, blind/deaf?” Even if unintentionally, it implies that blind/deaf/other disabilities are bad things. Or that only someone with those disabilities could do something like run into a door, not hear someone yell to them, etc. It turns the disability into an insult.
2. Referring to non-disabled people as “normal.”
3. Telling a disabled person how “amazing” or “brilliant” they are for doing normal things or just being alive - I don’t know. Strangers tell me how “amazing” I am for going upstairs. It’s obnoxious.
4. Assuming a disabled person won’t enjoy doing something because of their disability rather than asking them. (See also: assuming a disabled person’s limitations rather than letting the person state their own limitations.)
5. Assuming a disabled person requires your help before asking. (It implies the disabled person isn’t capable. Always ask or, even better, wait to be asked.)
6. Describing a disabled person by their “struggles.” So, like, in books where half the narrative is about how HARD it is for that disabled person because of their disability.
7. Talking to a disabled person only about their disability - keep in mind they have full lives outside of their disability.
8. Speaking on behalf of people with disabilities instead of letting them speak for themselves or asking them how they feel about something first.
9. Attempting to relate your abled experience in a conversation about disability. For example, during conversations about blindness, I’ve had numerous people say they “get it” because they once did an exercise where they were blindfolded for x-amount of time. Not the same thing, guys.
10. Whining about “perks” disabled people get (special seating, special parking, boarding planes first, getting extra time on tests, getting to take their dogs everywhere, etc). Abled people are privileged, and none of these small things makes up for that for those of us with disabilities. Also, even if you can’t SEE a disability, it’s best to let it go. Again, not all disabilities are visible, and disabled people are frequently accused of lying when they aren’t. It’s stressful and upsetting.
So yeah. That’s definitely not ALL of the smaller ableist things that occur in daily life, but maybe a few that will get some people thinking. Also, I"m very open to having a discussion about this. I am not the “voice” of disability (oh, yeah, let’s add an eleventh note - Saying things like “my cousin is disabled and he isn’t offended by….” No one speaks for the whole minority group. We all have different perceptions) so if you want to add or if you disagree - I’m open to hearing it.
In the mean time, thanks for reading this massive, massive tumblr post.
the president of nigeria is about to fuck boko haram up and cut his own salary in half and criminalized female genital mutilation
the president of guinea built/is building infrastructure and school and wells all over the country and is decreasing youth unemployment exponentially
the president of cote d’ivoire made school mandatory of children ages 6-16 and banned plastic bags while also building ultra modern trasportation infrastructure
the future is for real in africa
I think this should have a hell of a lot more notes on it than it does. This is what good news looks like folk, and the continent of Africa surely deserves a shed load of it.
Today (April 7th) is Remembrance Day for the Rwandan genocide. While Rwanda still faces challenges, their recovery has been incredible. They now have the highest percentage of women in parliament around the world (one of only two countries to have over 50% women), their gross national income has risen each year, and life expectancy has risen from 48 in 1990 to 65 in 2013.
Why am I laughing so hard?
constantly torn between “if it’s meant to be, it will be” and “if you want it, go get it”
seriously though.
how about a mix of the two “if its meant to be, its up to me”
People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter