Maggie Gordon in Tumblr-land

There were too many awesome people were on Tumblr for me to not sign up. My usual web-home is at http://maggiegordon.wordpress.com/ where I blog on social justice issues.

[seananmcguire]

I would like to request admission to the Birthday Unending not for my, but for my cat, if such a thing is permitted. His name was Tom, he was the best thing we ever found in a bin, and we have just said goodbye. He doesn't have a birthday, that we know of, but he brings with him one (slightly knackered) pillow, a penchant for forehead bunts, and a lot of my tears.

THERE IS NO NEED TO REQUEST ADMISSION FOR OUR BELOVED CATS, BIRTHDAY CHILD, FOR THEY FIND THEIR WAY TO THE CORN IN THEIR OWN TIME AND IN THEIR OWN WAY: THEY ARE ALL WELCOME HERE, AND THEY ARE ALL PRESENT, AND THEY ARE ALL BELOVED.

SO BELOVED.

BUT WE WILL TELL YOU THIS, IN HOPES THAT IT WILL HELP, THAT IT WILL EASE YOUR PAIN A BIT: IN THE CORN, THERE IS A CAT THE COLOR OF SMOKE ABOVE A BONFIRE, GRAY ON GRAY ON GRAY, WITH HINTS OF ORANGE BURNING THROUGH BELOW THE ASHES.  SHE IS LOVELY, AND SHE IS KIND, AND SHE IS OURS, FOREVER, SHE IS BOTH BEST AND WORST, AS ALL CATS ARE, AND THE WIND KNOWS HER NAME, AND THE CORN ALLOWS HER PASSAGE.

TOM IS WITH HER NOW.  SHE WILL SHOW HIM THE BEST PLACES TO SLEEP, AND TO GROOM, AND WHO GIVES THE BEST FOREHEAD RUBS AND SHOULDER-SCRATCHES.  SHE WILL KEEP HIM SAFE UNTIL HE CAN KEEP HIMSELF, AND WHEN YOU ARRIVE, HE WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU.

THEY ARE ALL WAITING, ALWAYS, FOR THEIR OWN BELOVEDS TO COME HOME.

SO BREATHE.  REMEMBER THAT LOVE ENDURES PAST DEATH, PAST PAIN, PAST ALL THINGS; IT IS LIGHT, AND LIGHT CANNOT BE DESTROYED, ONLY CHANGED.  LET HIM GO INTO THE CORN, AND KNOW THAT HE WILL REMEMBER YOU, THAT HE WAS LOVED, THAT YOU ARE LOVED, AND THAT CHANGE, WHILE OFTEN CRUEL, BRINGS GROWTH, AND MERCY, AND BIRTHDAYS.

WELCOME TO THE BIRTHDAY.  WELCOME TO THE BIRTHDAY.  WELCOME TO THE BIRTHDAY UNENDING.

***

Note: Admission requests for the Birthday Unending are not currently being accepted.  If you send in a request before I officially re-open them, it will be bounced back to you until such time as I re-open.  Thank you.

[maggie-gordon]

Oh... Oh. Oh, my heart. It is both broken and mended and I think I’m going to cry for a very long time right now. This was very beautiful and very touching, but so very very hard as such things are. 

[kateordie]

I realize I drew the Bi Pride Flag two different ways but… well, that joke writes itself.

This is a story about a little thing, and some big things. I have lots more on Patreon! I love you. Happy Pride.

[tinybro]

a random soulmate au idea i had, where a person has a mark/tattoo on their arm to represent their soulmate and it spreads as they grow up to incorporate different things that represent the person or have some significance to them and eventually you have a full sleeve tattoo and it’s neato.

(and just think of the potential shenanigans from people trying to interpret their tattoos. like “goddammit is this dog supposed to represent loyalty or do they just really fuckin love dogs??”)

[seananmcguire]

Words are rare.

Images, sure, both abstract and photographic.  The lucky ones are the ones who get a literal portrait of their soulmate, something they can use as a point of comparison as they wander through the world, looking for their other half.  But words?  Actual, written words, worked into the body of the tattoo like they belong there?  Rare.  Almost, well, freakish.

Shaun’s words came in when he was three years old, standing out stark and black against the inside of his arm.  And even that might have been okay–might have been something they could write off as normal–if they hadn’t been written on both sides.  Two soulmates.  Two ways to divide his heart.  And two sets of words.  RISE UP WHILE YOU CAN on the right; WAS IT WORTH IT on the left.  The usual images surrounded them, but the words…

Oh, the words were how he knew that he was special, and how he knew that he was screwed.

By the time he was six, he knew two more things for sure: that he was never going to let George die, and that he was never going to wear short sleeves again.

By the time he was sixteen, he knew the words on his left arm were a lie, because there was no one else for him, no one else in the whole damn world.

By the time he was twenty-six, he knew that even liars can tell the truth, once in a while.

Words are rare.  But people who live in them so completely that they refuse to listen to anything else are rare, too.

[maggie-gordon]

Oh god, MY HEART. IT IS FULL OF FEELS.

[paendorus-blog]

EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO REBLOGS THIS WILL GET THE FOLLOWING IN THEIR INBOX.

A BRIEF ORIGIN STORY

A SUPERPOWER OR THREE, MAYBE FOUR DEPENDING

A SUPERHERO OR VILLAIN NAME

YOU MIGHT ALSO GET AN ARCHNEMESIS WHO HAS REBLOGGED THIS ALREADY

AND YES I MEAN EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO REBLOGS THIS.

[maggie-gordon]

Scooby Doo Where Are You: Scooby doo can talk because we say so now shut up and watch the fuckin cartoon

The New Scooby Doo Movies: same

The Scooby Doo Show: same

Scrappy Doo: same

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo: same

Boo Brothers: same

Ghoul School: same

The Reluctant Werewolf: same

What's New Scooby Doo: same

A Pup Named Scooby Doo: same

Zombie Island: same

Witch's Ghost: same

Alien Invaders: same

Cyber Chase: same

That one johnny bravo crossover: same

Live action Scooby Doo films: same

The /other/ live action Scooby Doo films: same

Every fucking adaption of Scooby doo ever: same

Mystery Incorporated: Scooby doo is the descendent of an alien race of godlike creatures called the annunaki that cross the barriers between our world and theirs every thousand years by possessing animals; any offspring sired by the annunaki and normal animals have near supernatural abilities such as amplified intelligence and the ability to speak human language which makes scooby part horrifying lovecraftian god from the dawn of time and that's why scooby doo can talk

[tasseomancer]

My collection is finally complete and compiled beautifully on my Ikea…only now do I discover something awful. How could a publishing company be so cruel to one of its best and brightest? @seananmcguire, how could they do this to you? 😿

[seananmcguire]

I knoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

They’ve assured me that we’ll fix the spine when there’s a reprint.  But still, IT KILLS MY SOUL.

[maggie-gordon]

I will 100% buy a new copy just to have matching book spines because it makes me TWITCH. How cruel, such mistakes!

[judedoyle]

Progressive

Let’s start, this time, with a story. This is about Hillary Clinton – everything I write seems to be about her these days – but it’s about me, too. It’s about what it means, to be a feminist, or a woman on the left, and whether it matters. So before I get to her, let’s give you a good look at me. 

I’m at a job interview. It seems like I actually have a shot at this one. Someone who likes me knows the boss here, and has talked me up to him in person. I can show him my most recent performance review, in which I’m described as “a joy to work with,” that “my editors fight over who gets to edit my pieces,” and where the “places for improvement” section mentions they actually have to “wrack their brains for something I could do better.” I’ve come prepared to talk about my strong, built-in reader base, which I built from the ground up; the fact that I’ve led several social media campaigns that received national or international press attention and raised substantial funds, one of which was enthusiastically endorsed by several pro-choice members of Congress; my award for social media activism, from a prestigious women’s media organization, which I won by popular vote; the fact that I wind up at or near the top of my magazine’s “most-read” traffic list every time I publish a new piece.

I can mention other things, basic work-ethic things. I can mention that I have not voluntarily taken a vacation day or a sick day for the past 18 months, and that the last sick day I took was only because I was hospitalized. (I do have to take the day off on federal holidays, but on those days, I usually write for fun.) I can mention that I have never been late filing a piece. I can mention that the copy comes in clean, doesn’t require much editing, and gets turned around quickly, with maximum co-operation. I can talk about all that, at my job interview. Those are the questions I’m prepared to answer.

I’m not prepared for the question they ask.

“We’re a progressive site,” the man across the table begins, “And our readership, as with most progressive sites, is mostly men. You’ve focused a lot on women’s issues. Would you be comfortable writing something that men would be able to read?”

Keep reading

[prokopetz]

Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.

[writebastard]

So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.

[prokopetz]

Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.

[roachpatrol]

THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING

[roachpatrol]

vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core

humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast

vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast

humans: hahaha yeah

humans: it did tho

vsa: IT EXPLODED

humans: it exploded twice as fast

[froborr]

I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.

[megabeeprime]

Yeah, I love this.

[underscorex]

Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms - they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.

Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.

All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.

[roachpatrol]

klingons: okay we don’t get it

vulcan science academy: get what

klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way

klingons: why do you let them run your federation

vulcan science academy: look

vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up

vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip. 

vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how. 

vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want. 

klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation

[the-real-seebs]

Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

you know what the best evidence for this is? Deep Space 9 almost never broke down. minor malfunctions that irritated O’Brien to hell and back, sure, but almost none of the truly weird shit that befell Voyager and all the starships Enterprise. what was the weirdest malfunction DS9 ever had? the senior staff getting trapped as holosuite characters in Our Man Bashir, and that was because a human decided to just dump the transporter buffer into the station’s core memory and hope everything would work out somehow, which is a bit like swapping your computer’s hard drive out for a memory card from a PlayStation 2 and expecting to be able to play a game of Spyro the Dragon with your keyboard and mouse.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

you know what, I’m not done with this post. let’s talk about the Pegasus. the USS Fucking Pegasus, testbed for the first Starfleet cloaking device. here we have a handful of humans working in secret to develop a cloaking device in violation of a treaty with the Romulans. they’re playing catchup trying to develop a technology other species have had for a century. and what do they do? do they decide to duplicate a Romulan cloaking device precisely, just see if they can match what other species have? nope. they decide, hey, while we’re at it, while we’re building our very first one of these things, just to find out if this is possible, let’s see if we can make this thing phase us out of normal space so we can fly through planets while we’re invisible.

“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.

“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.

there must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human engineering students at Starfleet Academy, and every week in every single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like “our assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and my one human classmate built a chronometric-flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten it.”

[sameenbyhat]

Humans get mildly offended by the way they are presented in non-human media.

Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”

“That was ONE TIME.” 

There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity. 

And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”

There are entire serieses of horror movies where the premise is “We stopped paying attention to the human and ey found the technology.”

[jazzybot4]

reblog for new meta.  RE that last line: McGuyver. 

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.

[roachpatrol]

during orientation at a human college, vulcans are presented with a list of swear words. 

“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”

“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”

there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’. 

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

This is why the Federation is the only organisation to ever stand a chance against the Borg

The Borg can adapt to the brilliant millitary strategies of the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons and even the cold logical intellectual prowess of the vulcans

The Borg weren’t prepared for a starship captain to lure them into his 50′s noir detective holo-novel and then machine gun them to death with a weapon made out of hard light

[thewolverina]

This thread is amazing. Even as a baby star trek nerd that only really knows the new movies.

[sniperct]

“there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.”

I just died

[sunrisingblue]

I lost my shit at “toasts your bread after you’ve eaten it”

[randomingoftherandomness]

Oh please please someone write this

[maggie-gordon]

BEST THREAD

[bustysaintclair]

18 years ago when I was coming out, y’all made the word “bisexual” so dirty that for years the only word I felt was accessible to me was “queer”, if I had any chance at having a community. 

Queer was widely used at that point among LGBT+ people to refer to ourselves and our community, and while you’d look askance at a straight person using that word, it was most definitely acceptable to call another LGBT+ person queer.

And now y’all are telling me “Queer” isn’t an acceptable umbrella term to use and it just feels like another way you’re using subtle language policing to tell me that really the only people you want in your community are gold-star LG folks. 

Those of us who like the word queer because it accurately reflects our misfit status are basically being told that this self-identifier is dirty and wrong, this is no longer the “queer community”, and the message yet again is that we don’t really belong.

I get it if someone doesn’t want to be called queer, and I would never call another person queer against their will but holy hell please stop acting like it’s common knowledge that queer can’t be used as an umbrella term for our community when it was for DECADES

“q-slur” is a very new concept, kids.

[oudeteron]

This is something that’s completely overlooked, by the same people who fling the word “ahistorical” at every viewpoint they disagree with.

When I first started participating in any kind of LGBTQ+ stuff online (so, 10 years ago), “queer” was by far the most common descriptor. It was pretty much agreed it had been reclaimed enough to be safe (I mean, show me an active slur that has academic disciplines named after it?) and people seemed much more keen to explore the ambiguity the term offers, rather than sticking with predefined categories. By “q-slur” logic, we should’ve been much less accepting of it back then if we simultaneously believe that LGBTQ+ rights are advancing over time, but the opposite is true.

So I would say that the current stigmatization of queer is based on two things: 1) reactionary essentialism (seeing “queer” as too dangerous for the more clear-cut categories), and 2) respectability politics.

Now by taking away “queer”, we don’t have any other term that’s both catchy (no version of the abbreviation is) and broad enough to actually be inclusive. Gay is not an umbrella term. It always has a default connotation that’s very specific. It only reminds me of all the time I wasted on bad gay-only discourse when I was first questioning my own identity, and for this reason it took ages to arrive at the conclusion that I’m just attracted to multiple genders and also trans without dysphoria (because the other bullshit I had to contend with was the truscum narrative of transness). So, gay is not a safe term for me. It doesn’t describe me and if I used it, it would actually misgender my own relationship. I’m not doing that for any of you, sorry.

Do you know who the majority of the people who still use “queer” are? Trans and MGA. Yet again, we have a political line that privileges cis LG people who are fine with binary categories over the most routinely erased parts of the community. Of course.

This, I imagine, is also why so many bi/pan and trans/nonbinary people aren’t against aces being included. Chances are most of us, at least those who are 25+ or so, have experiences like this, with either being actively policed out or just unable to find the right identifiers for ages because of the stigma and general ignorance surrounding them.

And now you’re telling us we HAVE TO use gay, which isn’t a functional umbrella term, because queer suddenly isn’t acceptable based on this new logic? Do you even hear yourselves?

–

“But!” I can already hear the gatekeepers protest, “This all relies on a bunch of personal anecdotes!”

In which case, buddy, I have bad news for you about the vast majority of all modern LGBTQ+ history.

[miriamheddy-deactivated20181203]

I first came upon Queer as both an umbrella term and a field of academic study. This was in the early 90s. There were queer studies, queer histories, “queering” of the text, queer theory…

And Queer, more so than other words, felt inclusive of people who, at the time, referred to themselves as “genderqueer” as well as people outside the binary, as well as bisexuals, who couldn’t claim gay or lesbian.

It was, at the time, being reclaimed at a time when all the words were being used as slurs, so there was a real reason to reclaim them.

I’ve problem with using words that people are comfortable using, but not at the cost of erasing parts of our history.

[oudeteron]

I guess now is the time we’re hitting New Essentialism and Respectability Politics 2.0 from people who aren’t old enough to remember any of this.

[prokopetz]

Yeah, that’s something a lot of folks in the younger generation don’t get.

When you campaign against words like “queer”, to those of us in the older generations, what it looks like you’re doing is trying to roll the nomenclature back to the bad old days when cisgender gay men were treated as the only “real” members of the community, and everybody else was lumped together as this peripheral pack of weirdos who were expected to be slobberingly grateful to their betters just to be acknowledged at all.

Hell, I clearly recall a time when the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism would routinely castigate even lesbians as parasites and invaders - and be applauded for doing so. It’s difficult to overstate just how deep it went.

And, like, that wasn’t all that long ago - I’m only 33 and I’m old enough to remember that horseshit.

[wetwareproblem]

Queer is not a slur.

Not when used as a self-identification, and not when used as an umbrella term within the community, at least.

See, here’s the thing: The most common identifier used by bi, pan, and trans people to describe their sexuality? Queer.

Given that multiple studies have shown that bi people alone comprise about half the community, that makes it by far the most common term we use to describe ourselves.

What’s more, it’s not just an identifier: it’s a rallying cry. It’s a banner the whole community has assembled under forever. “We’re here, we’re queer” is a cliché for a reason. It’s a statement of power, and of pride - yes, we’re weird. We don’t fit into the “acceptable” categories cisheteronormative society gives us. And that’s a good thing. It’s a call to demolish those “acceptable” boxes, to build a world we’re all part of.

Its rejection is a relatively recent move by the same homonationalism that brought us “Bi people don’t belong,” the thrilling sequel “Trans people don’t belong,” and the stunning conclusion “Ace people don’t belong.” It’s a deliberate strategy employed by respectability politicians seeking a seat at the table - taking the work we’ve put in and distancing themselves from us so they can tell the straights “We deserve your respect because we’re just like you! We even hate queers!”

(And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the community suddenly forgot the massive, massive overlap between “queer” and “poly” when building the very self-conscious image of two clean-cut upper-middle-class smiling young professional men or women either. Anything that wasn’t “respectable” enough had to go. My deepest thanks to the person who pointed this out.)

In the rush for our place in an oppressive hell, we’ve lost our revolutionary edge, lost our fire, and lost a lot of what drove us in the first place. Fuck. That.

I’m queer, and you will never take that away from me.

[oudeteron]

It’s nice being Tumblr Old and having some recollection of the self-identifiers we used before this website. The slogans alone should tell you the motivators behind using “queer” as opposed to other terms. There was “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” There was “queer rage”. There was “not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you.” That last one especially shows rejection of any neat essentialist boxes – go away with your binaries, your easy categorization, and last but not least your respectability politics.

I’ve never seen “q slur” used before Tumblr, and even that only in the last maybe two years. I’m not playing the whole “you kids turn everything into a trigger” game, that’s not the point. My point is that almost uniformly older LGBTQ+ people on this website associate “queer” with empowerment, and it’s teenagers and early 20-somethings (who are almost the same age group as me, I’m 27) constructing this idea that it has always only been a slur, that it’s more prevalent than any other slurs still in use, and that this is somehow the “historically correct” view of the term and everyone using queer is ignorant of history. Which is just not true.

So anyway, here are some great functions of “queer” that aren’t replicated by any other term:

1) Wide relevance. Queer can be related to gender, sexuality, or both.

2) Opacity. It can be a stand-in for some other term (gay, bisexual, trans, etc), or it can actually mean something else altogether! Something that isn’t fully covered by any of those categories!

3) Queer could, therefore, actually function as an umbrella term (yeah, I know I can’t get away with that in the present climate, thanks for that). Calling everything gay, as has become the norm on Tumblr, isn’t only sticking it to The Straights ™; it’s also sticking it to all the LGBTQ+ people who don’t identify as gay specifically (not to mention straight trans people), and who never see ourselves brought up in casual conversation anymore. It’s back to “gay rights” style language.

And you know what, of course it is, because “LGBTQ+” and other versions of the abbreviation aren’t catchy. “Gay” is catchy. “Queer” is catchy. But for some reason, gee I wonder why it could be, “the community” has decided to eliminate precisely the term that does actually by default encompass a wide range of identities. And replace it with one that again gives primacy to “gay” as the default descriptor, as if the rest of us just don’t matter or should be happy with being “obliquely included” (that is to say, erased). We’ve come up with all this specialized terminology for gender and sexuality, but when it comes to being actually talked about aside from specifically describing yourself in an intro to your blog, it’s underused.

I could go on about how targeting “queer” disproportionately affects MGA and trans/nb people, including people with multiple marginalizations, who especially are likely to have a problem with all these discrete one-dimensional categories and feel that “queer” expresses something the other terms can’t. But that’s already covered in the OP under good old respectability politics.

TL;DR: You can’t just take away a term that many, many people in the community have been actively using for decades before your latest iteration of SGA discourse and expect no meaning to be lost or broken.

[prokopetz]

It always gets me when MRAs bring up the draft as an example of discrimination against men. Yes, it’s true that no woman in America has ever been subject to conscription in times of war; however, being that the most recent draft was in 1973, most likely neither have you. If you get to drag up stuff that happened before you were born, so does everybody else - and I’m pretty sure the ladies are going to win that particular game of misery poker.

[smitethestate]

BAM.

[lucyaudley]

Also, considering the draft was voted into law by Congress in 1940 but the first woman was elected to Congress in 1973, men only have themselves to blame. We didn’t decide the rules of the draft. They did.

[sourcedumal]

welp

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Actually, the first woman was elected to Congress in 1916 and was in office in 1940. Her name was Jeanette Rankin.

She was also a lifelong pacifist. She opposed every declaration of war bll that crossed her desk, and her vote was the only one against the proposal to go to war with Japan, because “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”

The men in Congress demanded she changed her vote and she refused. She was attacked by an angry mob and maligned in the press.

[a-ravenclaw-to-remember]

Why Do People Always Assume There’s a Quick Fix to my Chronic Illness?: A Novel by me.

[notadiagnosis-blog]

PS. I promise it’s not diet and exercise.

[adhocavenger-deactivated2016060]

I don't exist.

“Bisexuals don’t exist,” I tell myself as I slip between the molecular bonds of the steel bulkhead and appear in the room beyond.

They said I wasn’t real, that my feelings were just the confusion of a gay man waiting like a crysalid to burst into fabulous flight.

Jokes on them. Their false binary thinking now lets me rob banks and watch movies for free.

I stuff my backpack full of fresh new twenties and march right out of the vault and into the lobby.

“I contain within myself the capacity to love and find attraction in both men and women,” I inform them all. They question my feelings, my thought, and my attractions. But none think to question the duffel bag over my shoulder.

I back through the door as one of the tellers regales her customer with the story of that lying bitch from college that test drove her heart.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade they say.

When life gives you invisibilty, rob banks. That’s what I say.

[scenicroutes]

The girls are never supposed to end up together. I watched that movie with Ellen Page and Alia Shawkat, the roller-skating movie, the one where Ellen and Alia are best friends, each other’s only comforts in their podunk town. They need each other, and they hug, and they dance, and they tell each other I Love You, and Ellen meets a skinny boy who plays in a band. It doesn’t even work out with the boy, but that’s almost tangential. The girl was never a real option. I think that’s why it’s really difficult for girls. For me. We follow narratives and our fingertips trace the contours of the stories we love and we long to escape within the confines of our own lives. Meet your boyfriend in the pouring rain and yank down his mask and kiss him upside down. Run with your boyfriend to the front of the ferry and throw your arms out to the side and scream, “I’m king of the world!” If you are a girl in love with a boy, your possibilities are infinite. If there is a special girl in your life, you love her as a friend. You love her as a friend, but she becomes less important to you as you grow, and you leave her behind for a boy. She might even stand next to you when you marry the boy, and she might catch the bouquet of flowers that you throw to her. You’re giving her permission to move on, move away from you. It’s a ceremony of separation. But if you should fall in love with a girl - and loving and falling in love are two very distinct things - the first kiss is the end. You’ve all seen the movie. Or the television show. Or the after-school special, or you’ve read the book that was banned from your school’s library for containing Sexual Content. The point of your story is not to fall in love. The point of your story is to struggle. Your story begins with a lie and climaxes in a truth and ends with a kiss. In the movie of your life, forty-five minutes are devoted to you figuring out how to say that you want to kiss girls, and another half-hour is devoted to people’s objections, and maybe the last fifteen minutes is you kissing the girl. Maybe you don’t even get to kiss the girl. Maybe she tells you that she’s flattered, but she doesn’t bat for your team. The critics swoon; it’s realistic, they say, so realistic, to depict the struggle of the modern teen, the heartbreak of irresolvable incompatibility. Isn’t that always what celebrities cite in their divorces? “Irreconciliable differences.” And so you’re lying on the floor of your bathroom, your knees curled to your chest, or you’re on your sofa with a pint of ice cream, or you’re in bed watching your favourite sad movie on Netflix, and the collective weight of all that you consume settles on your shoulders, leans in, and whispers, “You were never meant to fall in love.” You were never meant to fall in love. Your story ends in tears or it ends in death. Jack Twist was bludgeoned to death with a tire iron and Ennis Del Mar was left alone in his closet to dance with an empty shirt. Alby Grant found Dale Tomasson swinging by a noose in the apartment that had been their safehouse, their respite, and he sank to his knees and cradled Dale’s bare feet and he cried. The Motion Picture Association of America axed Lana Tisdel and Brandon Teena’s sex scenes, but they didn’t have a problem with the extended shot of Lana cradling Brandon’s corpse in her fragile arms and falling asleep next to his body. Love and intimacy are ours only in death, or so it would seem. I don’t want to die. Isn’t that a very human experience? Not wanting to die? When does anyone who looks like me get to grow old and raise grandchildren and hold her wife’s hand as the skin wrinkles, turns translucent? Sometimes my father asks me if I’ll ever date a man. Sometimes he doesn’t ask. “You are attracted to men, and you dream about falling in love with men,” he says, as if he can will his imaginary daughter into existence merely by speaking about her. Or maybe he is just looking out for my safety. He’s seen the movies, too. He loves me. He doesn’t want me to die.

if this is heaven (via nonbinareyskywalker)

[kipplekipple]

Facts about mobility problems, specifically limping:

- The same issue causing someone to limp may not look the same from day to day or even from moment to moment.

- Sometimes a limp may disappear, or almost disappear. This can happen because of fluctuating pain levels, meds kicking in, joints rearranging themselves or even a period of rest.

- Someone may be able to walk without assistance one moment, and require a cane or a wheelchair the next.

The person with the mobility issue is the only one who knows. They aren’t faking, they are adjusting to various factors affecting their mobility problems.

Brought to you by the constant fear I live with, that someone will decide I’m faking just because I can occasionally manage a few steps without limping. I still need my cane. I still need accommodations. I don’t need your judgement.

[zetsubonna]

Please Stop.

Okay, but the first HP book came out in 1997. That was almost twenty years ago. No, JKR was not fully aware of her white/straight/cis privilege at that time. She has had 20 years to get better. She also wrote the first draft on table napkins while working as a single mother of multiple children and receiving public support.

We are allowed to retrospectively critique her lack of inclusivity. We are also allowed to think that perhaps her awareness of the lack of said inclusivity has improved.

Just as a goddamn FOR EXAMPLE, in 1997, if Rowling had tried to pitch Dumbledore, a school headmaster, as openly homosexual, her book would never have been published. Want some evidence? I can do that.

Regulations were introduced for discrimination protections on sexual orientation in employment on 1 December 2003, following the adoption of an EC Directive in 2000, providing for the prohibition of discrimination in employment on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Right, so he (Dumbledore) could have been fired for being gay at any point prior to 2000, even assuming Wizarding law was keeping up with Muggle law, which is a goddamn stretch considering how shoddy trials and evidence are maintained throughout Auror procedurals.

And, regarding “she could have made more students of color in the first place,” um:

The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed public discrimination, and established the Race Relations Board. Further Acts in 1968 and 1976 outlawed discrimination in employment, housing and social services, and replaced the Race Relations Board with Commission for Racial Equality[3] that merged into the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2004. The Human Rights Act 1998 made organisations in Britain, including public authorities, subject to theEuropean Convention on Human Rights.[4] The Race Relations Act 2000 extends existing legislation for the public sector to the police force, and requires public authorities to promote equality.

After 2000, some argued that racism remains common, and some politicians and public figures have been accused of promoting racist attitudes in the media, particularly with regard to immigration, however race and immigration although related are not the same concepts.[5] There have been growing concerns in recent years about institutional racism in public and private bodies. Although various anti-discrimination laws do exist, according to some sources, most employers in the UK remain institutionally racist including public bodies such as the police[6] and the legal professions.[7][8]

I’m not saying “JKR has always been conscious of her White Privilege.” I’m not saying “she intended this from the start.” I’m saying, she started this fucking series when she was 25, she got it published when she was 32, and she is now fifty and has millions of dollars, resources, and feedback.

Hey, check it out: she’s had twenty-five years to learn.

Jo Rowling is a white British woman with a Bachelor of Arts in  French and Classics from the University of Exeter. It may very well have taken her this much time and this much exposure to the greater, wider world- outside her very white, very British influences in Tolkien and Dickens- to realize, “Oh, shit, I could/should have made my books more diverse, that’s such a lovely idea, my fans are so wonderful, I love their headcanons, they have taught me so much, I’m really lucky to have learned all of this.”

We want people to grow, don’t we? We want them to expand their minds and change. So can we please stop hating on people who weren’t born into the movement for finding it later?

Thanks.

[sad-jew-with-cake-deactivated20]

my sister-in-law, who has no kids and does not spend time around children ever, decided she wanted to take my kids on an “outing” yesterday. (she sees them like 4 times a year usually). she took them to some weird historical u.s. military fort museum thing, it’s like a big compound with like 15 buildings enclosed by a fence. anyway my 5-yr-old saw one of those red metal fire alarm boxes on the wall and asked his aunt “what does that say?”

now the correct answer to this question, in my opinion, would be “that is a fire alarm. we only touch fire alarms if there is a fire. if there is a fire, you would pull the handle and it would make a very loud noise so that other people know to get out of the building.”

according to several reliable sources, my sister-in-law’s answer to the question was, “it says ‘pull.’”

so anyway that’s how they managed to evacuate all 15 buildings at the museum and why this is probably their last “outing” for a while.