Half-Assed Pandaladin

~If you're a little uncertain/I'mma give you that 151 proof/I know you feel that burnin'/but you gotta take it down, take it down/My love, my love, I just say it how it is/Cause I pinch you when you're dreaming, but you never wake up~

[hellyeahscarleteen]

Protecting Yourself from Criminalization for Self-Managed Abortion — OARS

Self-managed abortion (SMA) with pills is very medically safe and effective throughout early pregnancy, but there is a significant risk of criminalization in many U.S. states. While it is impossible to fully eliminate the risk of criminalization when having or planning to have an abortion at home, t

[kickerofelves]

Leave no online footprint of searches or purchases. Digital Defense Fund’s abortion privacy guide is your go-to resource for this. Using private browsers, two-factor authentication, encrypted messaging, strong passwords, etc. is critical. Google searches have been presented as evidence in an SMA trial before. Do not leave a digital trail.

Use the medications properly to prevent interactions with healthcare providers. The pills are very effective, but they have to be used right. Carefully follow the instructions provided on the How to Use Abortion Pill website. Note that misoprostol tablets should always be taken by dissolving them under the tongue. Do NOT insert misoprostol vaginally if you are self-managing an abortion. While this is medically safe, it can leave incriminating pill remnants that can be detected in the vagina during a pelvic exam if you end up needing to seek medical care. 

If it’s not an emergency but you need expert health advice, use a free calling service like Google Voice to call or text the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline at 1-833-246-2632. Medical complications are very uncommon with abortion pills, but they’re not impossible. The M+A Hotline is safe to use and is staffed by trustworthy clinicians who volunteer their time to help those who choose SMA. Do not use your own phone number to call as this will create a record that is visible to your cell service provider. 

Don’t disclose any information about SMA to emergency room staff if you do need to seek medical care. This is how most people who are arrested for SMA are reported. Healthcare providers are almost always who calls the police in cases of SMA criminalization. Contrary to popular belief, HIPAA does not protect your private health information from being shared with police if you are suspected of doing something that could be considered a crime. If you believe you need to seek urgent medical care, do not hesitate to go. Say “I think I’m having a miscarriage” and provide your symptoms. Do not mention any use of or purchase of abortion pills. There is no widely available test to detect misoprostol in your bloodstream. If you do not disclose it, there is no way for a medical provider to tell the difference between a medication abortion and a spontaneous miscarriage.

Do not talk to the cops. Period. Do. Not. Talk. To. The. Cops. If you are questioned by police you should state, “I am exercising my right to remain silent, and I wish to speak with an attorney.” Do not speak again or nod in response to a question. Contact the Repro Legal Helpline as soon as possible for expert legal advice: 1-844-868-2812. Do not agree to questioning or speak to any law enforcement official without a lawyer present.

[rina-calavera]

Adding onto this:

You need to say “I am invoking my right to an attorney”. It sucks, the cops suck, you have to be specific.

Sentences like “Gimme a lawyer, dawg,” have been interpreted by the court as saying “he asked for a lawyer dog, why would we have that?”.

They will interpret you in bad faith.

Don’t give them a chance.

[everythingfromdust]

Bring back the porn

[everythingfromdust]

[dr-ladybird]

@staff I’ll pay you to bring back the porn

[owarim]

[ambris]

Please, never let this meme die.

[silkirose]

This is the best one I’ve seen so far

[wizardshark]

What kind of quantum fucking memeing from 2056 are you people beaming to us

[warblyzombie]

It’s fucking back

[onyx-was-here]

shooting star. i can’t believe i’m hearing shooting star again in the year 2020

[mightyinvincible]

The fates have ordained that this cross my timeline again and you better fucking believe i’m reblogging it.

This is the only good meme, don’t @ me

[ishouldgay]

I hate the way Mass Effect goes about the Asari, especially in ME3. The games themselves can’t seem to pick what the Asari are. It keeps telling us that they are a wise people that Guide the galaxy with culture and art but most of the Asari we see and speak too don’t really follow anything like that. 90% of the Asari npcs show up as strippers and all the others are usually sexualized with their clothes.

The whole Asari commando thing ends up almost becoming a joke because they get slaughtered every time they show up. Then in ME3 the Asari people, all biotics, surrender almost immediately??

The game tells us they have a superiority complex but never really shows us any Asari being all that bad about it, besides maybe whoever is on the Council, and doesn’t ever show us the Asari influence any kind of culture. Then it pretty much punishes them for it by having what they did achieve be because of the artifact and have the reapers rip though their home world. 

Plus the whole idea of the Asari refusing to meet with the war summit that Shepard puts on is dumb. I’m sorry you give the Asari being diplomatic as their Alien Hat and then they refuse to be diplomatic???? 

Honestly it stinks of low key sexism

[serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty]

Boss made a dollar

I made a dime,

That was a poem

From a simpler time.

Now boss makes a thousand

And gives us a cent

While he’s got employees 

Who can’t pay the rent.

So when boss makes a million

And the workers make jack

Then that’s when we riot

And take our lives back.

#WorkingClassSolidarity

[veerletakino]

[opiumhug-deactivated20181011]

it’s infinitely more accurate to characterize a trans woman as a woman pretending to be a man than it is to say she’s a man pretending to be a woman

[valkyriethunderbitch]

This is such an important point, and it hits at the crucial problem that even when cis people do genuinely try to wrap their brains around trans people, they tend to have trans men and trans women entirely reversed.

When a cis man tries to imagine what it would be like to be trans, invariably that man imagines what it would be like if he “wanted to be woman,” because that’s what many people think trans women are.

Instead, he should be trying to empathize with trans men. He should be thinking about his own childhood and relationship to manhood, and then asking himself how it would have felt if he’d grown up being told he was a girl, forced to wear dresses, never recognized by other boys as a boy, and then experienced the horror of going through the wrong puberty and becoming a giant estrogen factory.

Many cis women, particularly in LGBT spaces, will fall all over themselves trying to empathize and identify with trans men, because the same transmisogyny that tells them that trans women and cis men are connected tells them that cis women and trans men are connected.

Instead, cis women should be asking themselves what it would have been like if they had never been allowed to have their womanhood acknowledged. How would it have felt to grow up being told you were a boy, not allowed to deviate from male stereotypes (often with violent repercussions if you did), always viewed by other women as an icky boy or predatory male, exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around, and had testosterone distort your body irreparably only to have everyone around you use your anatomy and appearance to forever deny your womanhood and where your best possible outcome is to transition and live your life in abject poverty fighting loneliness and dysphoria and surrounded by people who think you’re a disgusting, subhuman monster who should be locked away or put down?

If you want to worry about men pretending to be women, pay more attention to trans men. They are men who are forced to pretend to be women, and while that is immensely fucked up for them to go through, it doesn’t change the fact that they are MEN in WOMEN’S spaces, and many of them take advantage of transmisogynist ideas about gender to stay in those spaces even after coming out and transitioning. Just look at all the trans men at women’s colleges – schools that in most cases will not allow trans women.

Trans women have always been women. Trans women have always been female.

Trans men have always been men. Trans men have always been male.

A trans woman cannot be a “man pretending to be a woman” because by definition we aren’t men and never were.

[neshtasplace]

Needed to hear this today.

[kittenlikeasmallcat]

If you wanna have a clue what being a transgender person is all about, read this.

[thecuckoohaslanded]

“exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around”

So many people have no idea how true this is.  Almost no statement I have ever read has resonated with me more than this.

One of the arguments certain people (mostly terfs, but dishearteningly often well-meaning feminists who have accidentally been corrupted by terf rhetoric) make about trans women is that we experience “male privilege.”  This is a muddy topic, because there are certainly some situations where being socially read as male is a convenience (it is much easier to apply for jobs pre-transition and then transition while employed than it is to apply for jobs during or after the more awkward and difficult parts of transition, as an example).

There can be benefits, here and there.  But to call it privilege, especially with the term “male” attached to it, is horribly misleading.

Trans women can, in the earlier parts of our lives, EXIST in male spaces.  That does not mean we belong in them.  Or feel comfortable anywhere near them.  Even if you look outwardly male, being in male spaces is terrifying.  Even being in NEUTRAL spaces is terrifying.  You are in a constant state of panic around men.  And you fear rejection and ostracization from other women – the people you most empathize with and understand, whose personalities and ways of thinking most closely match your own, whose communities you desperately crave to be a part of because that’s where you belong – almost as much as you fear breathing the same air as any man you aren’t comfortably out to, including friends and family.  We NEVER feel safe.  And we are firsthand witnesses to all the reasons we SHOULDN’T feel safe around men.  They’re horrifying.  What was so frustrating about the “Locker Room Talk” scandal during the 2016 election, as a trans woman, is that you know from personal experience that it was “anywhere and everywhere outside the earshot of a woman” talk.  Dozens of sports teams came forward and said no, we don’t talk like this, we would never say things like this, we would never disrespect women like this.  I have never been an athlete.  My only experience with locker rooms was required as a high school credit, and made me extraordinarily uncomfortable.  I ASSURE you, I have heard talk like this OUTSIDE of the hypermasculine world of sports.  The level of total disregard that men have for women’s most basic humanity is STAGGERING.  Men don’t see women as less than human.  They see women as less than ALIVE, nothing more than usable, disposable objects.  

Trans women’s great “privilege” of existing “safely” in male spaces is being exposed to this world and these people up close, alone, (if in a locker room, without most of your clothes, and with all the added shame about your body that comes from that) in a state of absolute terror that ANYTHING about your personality, your mannerisms, your body language, the way you don’t quite fit in with the way they talk, will tip them off that you’re not one of them.  Your LIFE depends on whether they notice.  That’s not safety.  That’s Russian Roulette where you don’t get the option to stop playing, and not only do you not know if or when you might get the bullet, you don’t even know how many bullets are loaded in the first place.  Every single interaction with another human being is a trigger being pulled in slow motion, in overwhelming, agonizing detail as you can only wait to find out if you drew a blank.

We spend our lives pretending, often badly, to fit in with these people.  Not because we have or want any god damn thing on this earth in common with them, but because the alternative – that they will know we aren’t – fills us constantly with a paralyzing, spine-chilling terror that is almost impossible to describe.  Even when real benefits that do come from being read as male (again, this is usually socioeconomic factors), we are constantly, inescapably aware that all of these things come at the expense of our own authenticity.  We have to lie to get them.  We live in unbearable discomfort with the fact that everything good that happens to us is because other people are making these massively incorrect assumptions or judgments about the kinds of people we are.  We live with the fact that everything good could be taken away the second anyone finds out we’re not what they wanted based on our appearance, because often it’s the only way we can survive at all.

Let me rephrase that last part for emphasis, because it’s integral to understanding the core of this issue, and the core of the argument that OP (and the excellent addition) wanted to make.  If your takeaway is just ONE part of my addition to this post, let it be this:

Every single interaction we have with another human being is based solely on the value assigned to us based on our physical appearance, and how well we can conform to those expectations, which leaves us feeling suffocatingly, deeply uncomfortable and often terrified for our personal safety and livelihood.  

Think about that before you put the words “male privilege” anywhere in a conversation about trans women.

For parts of our lives, we can exist in male spaces.  But even in them, we are still always, at our core, women.  Everything else is social.  Everything else is acting.  Trans women pretend to be men until we just can’t take it anymore, and we either live as the women we always were, or one way or another, we die.  We can never really be anything other than female.

Womanhood is not the thing trans women have to fake.

[kiriamaya]

Cis folks, read this.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[chyrrry]

hey so this post is good but is missing the context that Lilly Wachowski and her sister Lana Wachowksi are both trans and the directors of the matrix, which is popularly read as being a metaphor for being trans.

The “Fuck both of you” is not just a person being mad at assholes on the internet, it’s the creator of a work being mad at assholes on the internet for misinterpreting their art to be the total opposite of what it’s meant to be.

[dsm-v]

shut the fuck up

[pumpkinylink]

Do non-americans realize that the United States is literally just a bunch of countries in a trench coat that agreed to be semi-nice to each other in order to sneak into the Big Boy Club? Because let’s be honest that’s just what the USA is

[pumpkinylink]

The rest of the world: So… you’re a big country?

The states, standing on each other’s shoulders: Y- yes,,,

[pumpkinylink]

I love how everyone who’s reblogged this hasn’t added anything on or tagged anything on it. They’re all just like “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the entire United States summed up in one post-”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

#oh my god is THAT why you guys are so weird

Yeah 100%

[notapaladin]

#you know how a bunch of ferrets will cooperate just long enough to cause Problems?#that’s the usa

via

[skyllianhamster]

sometimes you look at the noodle arms in the game and decide you've had enough

[stealthydentist]

Yes please.  The supermodel body is nice, but surely there’s more than that to the asari.

[kumihoblog]

This is the sort of content I wish we could get in game. Pass me with the noodle arms.

[tanoraqui]

it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)

[meerius]

What more it wasn’t just losing his friends, he was a commanding officer of a battalion of working class men. All farmers and miners from the same area of Lancashire. He felt affinity for them, but wasn’t allowed to socialize between the ranks due to military protocol and he hated it. 

 "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

“My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself”. 

[seriousfic]

[themightyglamazon]

TRIES NOT TO CRY

[jenniferrpovey]

There is a reason Frodo, who represents the English gentry, in the end falls and is caught by Samwise, who represents the common man.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Is Gollum.

[sniperct]

The Lord of the Rings repeatedly stresses the horrors of war. Eowyn's entire arc is about the truth of warfare versus the way it's glorified. She starts out glorifying war and combat and soldiers, even when her own brother is telling her war sucks and is terrible. And then in the end, she sees first hand what war does to people.

Aragorn's entire arc isn't to be the steadfast hero saving the day, it's to hold the line in terror and horror and blood while the overlooked folk are the people who save the world. And then, what makes him a king, is not his skill in battle, but his healing hands.

Which then ties into both Eowyn and Faramir's arcs. Eowyn goes into healing not because she's a weak and meek woman, but because war is horrible and saving lives is better than taking them. Aragorn is glorified within the text for his healing, and so is Eowyn.

Also, tying into the common man thing, in the movies it's Faramir but in the books it's SAMWISE who questions what brings a man so far from home to fight in a war and if he is really so different.

LOTR is anti-war propaganda.

[grier-the-goblin-deactivated202]

"LOTR is anti-war propaganda"

All good war stories are

[dr-ladybird]

Headcanon:

Names like T’Soni or T’Perro are matronymic. They started off as “child of [mother’s name]” and then became fixed as surnames. The B’ version is either from a different culture, or “child of [father’s name].

Consequent mental image:

Shepard downloads Gaelic into their translator. It gets slightly confused and starts talking about “Liara MacSoni.”

[kumihoblog]

Gotta Love Surprise Medical Bills

Kinda looks a bit like they are even charging me for the same thing twice from two different docs. Seriously though, what’s the point of going through all the pain of paying up from if they are just going to demand more money later? 

Fucking hospitals.

[omegastation]

i don’t know if it has been discussed in the fandom before but i have questions 

do you think all species can knit or crochet?  would some of them invent techniques that we humans don’t use? mostly thinking about species with less fingers than us 

do you think there are interspecies knitting groups? 

(i watch so many knitting podcasts lately that i can just picture a krogan, a turian and a salarian having their own group and podcast)

ravelry is obviously a thing on the extranet, right? 

and also can we hope that knitting isn’t seen as a female hobby in that day and age because legit anyone can knit, male members of each species included? (when there are male members of course)

[dr-ladybird]

It should be physically possible for everyone to knit or crochet, except perhaps hanar… the question is which species whould have those traditions, and which ones would have different traditions.

And the future seems pretty gender-equal in general!

[kumihoblog]

Anthropologically speaking any of those species would have reason to do a variation on knitting or crocheting, as they are means of processing material into clothes without the use of more advanced technology, in a similar way that basket weaving and pottery are fairly standard ‘core’ technologies of early civilizations.

I think the question would be more which species would preserve the skill as a hobby (arguably all of them), and what sort of patterns and styles would arise from each culture would be a pretty fascinating topic to dive into.

[nathanielthecurious]

a lot of you hate historians and archaeologists, and i think that’s a problem

look, i fully recognize that there are reasons to be skeptical of history and archaeology. i am very on board with criticizing academia as an oppressive institution, and the way that researchers take their bigotry and bias with them to their work. i also recognize that academia does a pretty bad job of communicating what it does to the public, and that’s a part of why people’s hostility to it is able to flourish.

but i am disturbed by the pervasive narrative in online leftist spaces that people who research the human past are ignorant and bigoted, and i think we need to do more to combat that narrative.

historians being homophobic has become a whole meme, and it feels like people are just using historians as a homophobia scapegoat, when in reality the humanities are overwhelmingly left-leaning. people also keep blaming historians for erasing the homoeroticism of fictional literary characters, which is just… not what historians do. homophobic biases and erasures in the interpretation of history over the past few hundred years are a very real thing that’s important to learn about, but scholars have radically shifted away from that approach in recent generations, and these memes are not helping people outside the field to understand history and reception. instead, a lot of people are coming away with the impression that…

(source… really? nobody?)

this thread gets bonus points for the comments claiming that modern historians argue about whether achilles was a top or a bottom using homophobic stereotypes, which i can only guess is a misunderstanding of the erastes/eromenos model (a relationship schema in classical greece; i think people have debated whether achilles and patroclus represent an early version of it). also a commenter claims that the movie troy invented the idea of achilles and patroclus being cousins when no, they were also cousins in lots of ancient sources.

there’s this post about roman dodecahedra (link includes explanation of why the original post is misleading).

there’s this thread about how some thin gold spirals from ancient denmark look exactly like materials used in gold embroidery to this day but archaeologists are stupid and don’t know that because they dont talk to embroiderers enough. in fact, the article says they were most likely used for decorating clothing, whether as a fringe, braided into hair, or embroidered. so the archaeologists in the article basically agree with the post, theyre just less certain about it, because an artifact looking similar to a modern device doesn’t necessarily mean they have identical uses.

this thread has a lot of people interpreting academic nuance as erasure. the museum label literally says that this kind of statue typically depicts a married couple, giving you the factual evidence so you can interpret it. it would be false to say “these two women are married” because there was no gay marriage in ancient egypt. (interpreting nuance as erasure or ignorance is a running theme here, and it points to a disconnect, a public ignorance of how history is studied, that we can very much remedy)

lots of other conspiracy theory-ish stuff about ancient egypt is common in social justice communities, which egyptologists on this site have done a good job of debunking

oh, and this kind of thing has been going around. the problem with it is that there are loads of marginalized academics who research things related to their own lives, and lived experience and rigorous research are different forms of expertise that are both valuable.

so why does this matter?

none of these are isolated incidents. for everything i’ve linked here, there are examples i havent linked. anti-intellectualism, especially against the humanities, is rampant lately across the political spectrum, and it’s very dangerous. it’s not the same as wanting to see and understand evidence for yourself, it’s not the same as criticizing institutions of academic research. it’s the assumption that scholars are out to get you and the perception that there is no knowledge to be gained from thorough study. that mindset is closely connected to the denial of (political, scientific, and yes historical) facts that we’ve been seeing all around us in recent years.

on a personal note, so many marginalized scholars are trying to survive the dumpster fire of academia because we care that much about making sure the stories that are too often unheard don’t get left out of history… and when that’s the entire focus of my life right now, it’s disheartening to see how many of my political allies are just going to assume the worst about the entire field

[plavoptice]

Thank you! Was just saying the other day that no one wants to find queer history more than queer historians but that isn’t how this works!

Furthermore it is reductive to label past people with our modern labels of sexuality and gender, sometimes culturally misplaced.

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

Without a doubt, whiteness is a bigger enemy of “white culture” than anything else.

As for me, if I had to name my ethnicity, I guess I’m German-American; and once upon a time, that used to really *mean* something, used to be something deeper and more meaningful than Lutheran church and polka music and pretending to give a shit about soccer. There used to be extended families, schools, Sprachenbund, festivals, distinct communities, all that good stuff, but that’s all gone now. “Now it is just another someplace where automobiles live,” as Herr Vonnegut once said. And it’s the same story with Irish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, et cetera and so forth immigrants to this brokedick country; there used to be rich, vibrant communities of European immigrants and the children of European immigrants that kept alive art, music, folklore, language, all that good stuff, that said loudly and proudly, “We are here, and this is who we are.”

That’s all gone now. Nowadays, ethnicity within whiteness is just an excuse to drink expensive beer at a folk festival once a year. And people of color didn’t do that, naw, the dominant WASP society did that, and we were complicit in going along with it, because we benefited materially from it, nevermind what we had to give up along the way. They’ll try to sell you a bill of goods about how integration did this; it’s actually the opposite.

White pride is not cultural pride because whiteness is not a culture; whiteness is the Borg. The truth is that white-identitarianism is how come I never got the opportunity to learn Diets on my Oma’s knee.

[rudolf-rokkr]

It’s stuffy and takes a long time to set up and is more reading than anyone feels like doing but Rudolf Rocker’s Nationalism and Culture is a huge-ass take on basically this by other means.

[lauraannegilman]

As a Jewish person who married into an Irish-German-Geek family, this is scarily accurate.  They were astonished that my family had this entire side-culture that had nothing to do with America OR really to do with religion, but was entirely about being Jewish (culture) - music and food and jokes and language.  They had no traditions that were specifically German or Irish or Greek (or even any celebration of that particular blending).  My husband didn’t even have the (to me) expected smattering of German or Greek words in his vocabulary, and had no knowledge of the cuisines.

Even their Christmas traditions were kind of… homogenized Americana.

[telegantmess]

I have felt this strongly for a very very long time. I have nothing of my Greek or Hungarian backgrounds, and almost nothing of my Jewish background because to earn whiteness, my family shed its cultures, its languages, its stories, and its everything. What I have of those things, I have had to excavate myself and there is so much that I don’t have the tools to access. Whiteness is like a gaping wound in my identity, its a sucking void that prevents me from finding the ground of my history to put my feet on. whiteness requires that we do violence to ourselves in order to access it, there should be no surprise that it is expressed through diverting and amplifying that violence outward. I experience whiteness as violence, and I genuinely do not understand how other white people find a place within it, and doubt that any of us do. and maybe this is the source of white insecurity, the instinctual knowledge that we are trying to exist in a non-space, a space of lack, an emptiness. We defend whiteness because we live in a world that tells us that it will keep us safe, when we know on a gut level that the shield is made of cardboard, that the protection it affords is barely more than a placebo. Whiteness is a poison. we can choose to counter it with an antidote, or we can poison ourselves and those around us for the appearance of safety. 

[daggers-drawn]

Whiteness = Cultural Bleach