born bad

lin, they/she pronouns // i've tasted blood and i want more

[flintno-deactivated20170511]

[filmedyke]

these are the victims of a trump presidency. the american people fear for their lives and basic human rights because of their next president. this is not what an election should look like.

[memeufacturing-deactivated20161]

i could talk for hours about how voter disenfranchisement, restrictive ID laws, extremely complacent and lackluster strategizing on the part of the DNC and the rest of the party, weak campaigning on the part of HRC’s campaign itself, the “shy tory factor” resulting in incorrect poll information, and the general willingness of millions of uninformed voters to vote for donald trump himself were factors that played a far, far larger part in trump’s victory tonight rather than the fact that less than one percent of voters in almost every state voted for the green party while the vast majority of gary johnson voters would have voted for trump if johnson hadn’t been a choice meaning that gary’s signficant presence in the election actually hurt trump’s odds… but i’d most likely just get shouted down

[memeufacturing-deactivated20161]

i’ve always been tentative about third parties. those who actually have listened to what i have to say for the past 6 months will know that, from the start, i’ve said “if you live in a major state like florida or michigan or north carolina then please for the love of god do NOT vote third party”. this has always been my position and it’s never changed.

that being said, if you think third parties the reason why hillary lost out in florida, or michigan, or north carolina, and willingly refuse to accept that there are factors at play here that have been problems for decades that resulted in tonight’s disaster, and you blatantly refuse to address those topics or attempt to bring them to any sort of light (so as to encourage progress) in favor of mob mentality & shouting down the puny minority that voted for a third party this election, then you really need to do your research and re-evaluate your priorities. you’re wasting your breath. you’re yelling at a problem that didn’t lose us this election and you’re refusing to acknowledge the exceptional problems that did.

i know it’s so god damn easy to solely blame the third parties for this one. i know it’s easy to find one single scapegoat and to pin all the problems that tonight is going to bring about on that one scapegoat. but i’m begging you all: please, do your own research and draw your own conclusions about tonight. please stop automatically believing whoever can talk the loudest & fastest on this website

[theagonyofdefeat]

[gosselaars]

thi-targaryen:

[theterriblecanyonsofstatic]

These people aren’t sad that their candidate didn’t win. They are terrified for their safety. Fuck America. Fuck Donald Trump. We are now an international disgrace.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

i'm confused. people being angry and tired of oppression and speaking out against racism has pushed racists to be more proud and swing more people to the right? what are people facing discrimination supposed to do then, when it seems like no matter what, they're going to hate us more and more? i'm not being rhetorical, i actually cannot figure out what this means. what are we supposed to do to make things less shitty?

the racists were always there. no one was swayed by racist rhetoric or became more racist (or if they did, it’s hard to gauge. id have to wait for future studies to know for sure) so much as they ended up becoming strange bed fellows. They are proud that the conditions were perfect to push alot of people to the right either out of frustration or desperation.

heres 2012

here’s 2016

I was prepared for a hillary victory, honestly, and apparently EVERYONE ELSE besides the most diehard trump supporters.

When i saw the results from the rust belt start pouring in, i knew immediately Trump would win. it was the same pattern of upset victory I saw in Britain during brexit.

In britain, BREXIT had an upset victory from labour voting working class people in the north, who, like the rust belt, were fucked by conservatives in the 80s and ignored and left to rot until the current day by the right and a left that gave them empty gestures of solidarity, which is why they voted in their respective elections as a referendum against the elite.

And the fact that, rather dramatically, much of union households in Ohio were switching to Trump, which are traditionally guaranteed democrat votes (these are households that previously handed obama two victories, so the racism argument falls flat) considering the hostility the republican establishment holds for unions.

Ah ha, but a difference, Trump isn’t from the establishment (the political establishment, i mean, he is still a millionaire socialite media mogule) or at least he isnt perceived to be by the white working class. Espeically in the rust belt, the former heart ofmanufacturing and industry for the american empire, that drove the formation of the American middle class, where those same families and whole cities TODAY struggle day to day with the effects of globalization and trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP.

Hillary embodied the very class of politician that delivered them ruin or threatens to do so as she supports the TPP. Trump is decidedly anti-TPP, and what’s more, he enraptured the rust belt with a platform that protects american industry. So these typically inclusive, well meaning people are voting trump, not because they hate minorities, necessarily, but to revolt against a political status quo that has forgotten them and just continues to screw them. The TPP is a big deal on this. Michael Moore states it best:

It was the traditional and reliably consistent democrat union voters and working class in the rust belt that pushed the rest of the vote into a trump victory.

Often the plight of the working class is forgotten by people in the blue states. when they jeer at the non-college degree holding white vote, they are jeering at the 77k earning family struggling to make ends meet with a blue collar job while a trade deal that would benefit the liberals on thecoast threatens to tear apart towns in the midwest. its just dressed up, functioning classism.

They have voted trump because the leadership and the followers of the mainstream left decided to take a fat shit on the working class backbone of their party support.

This is what Trump’s victory means. It’s nothing personal against you. To make things less shitty, it probably pays to pay attention to their issues rather than pretend it away as “racist hick white tears” or whatever.

[psshaw]

I was really puzzled tonight by how many people on my dash see this election as a primarily LGBT+ issue, and this fills in a lot of the gaps in my thinking. It’s important to call out discrimination, but I think we need to start demanding more economic awareness from our left-leaning leaders. Too many voters just can’t be made to give a shit about social issues, or they consider them a side issue to putting food on the table.

There’s a lot of “fascists did this just because they’re fascists” going on right now, but so much of this election was really about a class divide, and putting the blame on the usual privileged suspects isn’t gonna stick when it comes to explaining Trump.

[bubblxgumbitch-deactivated20171]

Reblog this if your blog is a safe haven for ALL non-white, disabled, trans, queer, and/or women, and your ask box is open to anyone who needs it tonight, or anytime, for the next few years.

[sprnklersplashes]

Make Matteusz a main 2k17

[amystheme]

I think it’s important to note that even thought this week’s episode talked about homophobia and how it impacts lgbt youth especially from marginalized communities they didn’t choose to adopt the pov of the abusive side, they didn’t indulge in awful scenes in which we would be forced as an audience to assist to that violence, which was frankly such a relief

truly, it is matteusz’s story and if you commit to that then there is no attempt to ~empathize~ with his family, there is no excusing what they did or showing it to create some voyeuristic angst because ultimately, it isn’t about him leaving, it’s about his new life, his new family and the writers understood that perfectly.

honestly, what they choose to tell and not to tell onscreen is so important and respectful like we didn’t have to witness him being thrown out we didn’t see the hateful words and the anger.

instead what we saw was the shelter charlie offered and the love they share that’s what mattered that’s the heart of it all & that’s how you can tell there are lgbt writers on the team its just. so well done and it feels so good as a non-straight viewer to feel listened to and cared for like that

[tshifty]

when i say “unfollow me if you support trump” im not saying it ironically. no, seriously, if you support trump then i dont want your disgraceful ass to be in any way associated with my blog. get out.

[tshifty]

trump supporters are getting mad keep reblogging

[tshifty]

it’s really telling to read the comments on this post about people bitching about how “this is mean” or “this is childish”, about how “you should respect everyone’s opinions”. i respect all opinions as long as they do not question the validity or equality of a person, and trump’s entire campaign is built upon kicking people down to rise to the top. this is not a normal election, and has absolutely nothing to do with political party. trump is a rapist, a misogynist, a white supremacist, homophobic, islamophobic, transphobic, ableist, sexist, and above all selfish. so no i do not want people who support that to be following my blog, and if you’re offended by that maybe you should think about how offended the rest of us are that you protect such terrible “values” that aim to destroy our equality. eventually you’re going to have to stop living in your fairy tale world where everyone gets along despite one side wanting to take away the rights of the other; if you want to take away the rights of me and my friends, then i refuse to have anything to do with you.

The person I reblogged this from deserves to be happy

I tried to scroll past this. I really did

[invisiblelad]

I feel like minor acts of kindness and good intentions are really important on days like this. 

[chychyotokipus]

since someone asked for a compilation here

[pfdiva]

BLESS YOU THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE WANTED IN LIFE SINCE THESE FIRST STARTED COMING OUT.

[reina-negrita-deactivated201905]

The language of academia can be so fucking pretentious and elitist. You can’t write a critical paper about people that won’t even understand what you’re trying to say. Plus, the need to make something that supposed to educate and facilitate the exchange of ideas, so complex and complicated to understand is ridiculous. If someone, as a scholar cannot break down complex ideologies and theories into a form that the average person can understand then what the fuck are you doing, honestly? Academia is not about a continuous circle-jerk with your PhD buddies. It’s about exchanging ideas and reaching people, from all walks of life and background. The world is bigger than people with JSTOR memberships.

[adhd-ahamilton]

“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”

“Well…obviously speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused. And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us - like getting married, having children, etc. - were just the way things were back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse, but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful, overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”

[korrigu-deactivated20180205]

this is what I’ve been saying

[beachdeath]

i am so tired of radical vulnerability discourse that locates empowerment in divulging personal pain and i really worry about the implications of a young creative culture where your influence and your popularity and your follower count is implicitly tied to your willingness to talk about your personal trauma, your willingness to let thousands and thousands of strangers know what happened to you, your willingness to make your most private pain public. 

like i really worry that our culture is commodifying trauma? a band i really like, led by a young woman about my age, they released a song in early 2015 that was quite clearly about sexual assault. and it was a great song, and it earned a very deserved warm reception, but interviewers would persistently ask the lead singer if it was “a personal account,” and she would always say that it was an observation on rape culture and leave it at that. and then about a year later she released a personal essay saying that, yes, it was about her own experience of sexual assault, and then there was another wave of secondary clickbait-y thinkpieces congratulating her for being so brave and so open.

so we have a great song addressing sexual assault, which can more than stand on its own as a piece of art. and we have a young woman who, after a year of getting the same question from reporters, says, “i was raped; the song is about me.” and then we have another wave of reporters coming in to write identical stories repeating her words, calling her brave, and collecting ad revenue.

and that’s what i mean: for every act of personal disclosure of trauma, there is this weird media apparatus that feeds on publicizing that trauma and collecting fat stacks of ad money. publications are taking what might be an empowering process for some people and they’re incentivizing and monetizing public trauma disclosure. it’s deeply fucked up.

so like. you don’t owe the world the story of your trauma. you don’t need to make your grieving and healing a public process. you are not less courageous or less creative or less empowered because you choose to go through something privately. and you should be very wary of publications that traffic in underpaying marginalized young people to describe their trauma in detail. imo.

[thelingerieaddict-deactivated20]

This is a good read.

[imperial-russia]

As unbelievable as it sounds this blog has reached another milestone - that of 11 000 followers. And as is tradition over here, I would like to thank you all for sticking around with a small book giveaway. The book in question this time is  Former People : the Last Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith. You merely need to read my short review of it to know this is a book to have if you are even bit interested in Russia, history or nobility.

The rules are same as always:

1) You need to be following me.

2) Reblog this post. The deadline to do so is midnight of 20th September 2016!

3) You must be OK with sharing your postal information with me (privately of course). You have to live in a country where Bookdepository.com delivers to.

4) If I cannot reach the winner, another one will be chosen.

As they say, may the odds be ever in your favour!

[fifthtee]

Tofu fell asleep watching TV

[picascribit]

Why are we still waiting on LGBT representation in the Potterverse?

LGBT fans have every right to be disappointed in JKR. She does not have our backs. She has failed to represent us at every opportunity.

I don’t care what you heard, she has never said anything about considering making Dean and Seamus a canon couple. That is a persistent internet rumour with no basis in fact.

She signed off on an entire play about the close, openly affectionate relationship between Albus and Scorpius. If one of them had been a girl, it definitely would have been framed as a romance, and they would have ended up together. But instead we got a “no homo” at the end with Scorpius crushing on a girl who is consistently terrible to him, and ditches her own cousin for four years for being friends with him.

And I don’t want to hear any BS about how they are “just kids”. If Scorpius is old enough to know he has feelings for a girl, he’s old enough to know he has feelings for his BFF.

Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald. That much was hinted at between the lines of DH with nods and winks, but it was never explicitly confirmed in canon, in spite of there being dozens of ways it could have been accomplished with a passing reference. We only got verbal confirmation of it months after the fact.

And honestly? Having the only (sort of) canonically queer character fall in love with a violent fascist and suffer for it is not good representation no matter how you look at it.

You can dig through canon for all the “evidence” you like that this or that character is queer, but I assure you, none of that was JKR’s intention.

It is arguable that Remus Lupin was queer-coded (most explicitly in the POA movie), with lycanthropy being treated as analogous to HIV/AIDS, and him being treated as a danger to children because of it. HIV/AIDS was certainly considered to be primarily a “gay” disease at the time of writing, and gay men are often viewed by homophobes as predatory towards children. But slapping a queer metaphor on a character who is only shown having a heterosexual relationship in canon is not representation either.

The only explicit mention of the existence of queer people in canon is a single line where Dudley Dursley asks if Cedric was Harry’s boyfriend. Yeah, that’s right, a bully using homosexuality as an insult is all the on-page representation JKR ever gives us. Thanks a lot.

Mentioning our existence is not “inappropriate” for children. It is the 21st century, and JKR is one of the most popular YA authors of all time. Having queer characters in YA books isn’t “risky” or “crossing a line” anymore. There are almost 1000 named canon characters, and dozens of canon hetero pairings. She has given us nothing. There is no excuse for this. We deserve better.