certified awkward mess

wednesday ♡ 24 ♡ she/her ♡ gender studies grad student ♡ queer feminist ♡ friend to all cats

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada’s Investments in Social Programs Now Rank Near the Bottom of the Industrialized World

New study finds Canada’s public social expenditures rank in the bottom 10 of all OECD countries

Think government spending on social programs is out-of-control?

Nevermind what the Fraser Institute and other right-wing groups will tell you, Canada is actually underfunding social programs by a significant amount compared to other industrialized countries around the world.

According to a new OECD study looking at how much countries spend on services, benefits and tax breaks related to healthcare, families, old age security, unemployment, housing and more, Canada’s public social expenditures fall well below the OECD average – even lower than the United States.

Continue Reading.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

This is the not so surprising result of voting Conservative and Liberal governments into power for decades.

When I say that these two parties are two sides of the same coin this is what I mean. When I say that the Liberals hold fiscally Conservative policies when it comes to social services this is what I’m talking about.

For example:

Justin Trudeau is maintaining Stephen Harper’s cuts to health transfers. This is funding increases of just 3% per year (which were cut by Harper’s governments from 6%).

This kind of attitude towards essential social programs goes way back to the Liberals:

Canada’s Harsh ‘Austerity’ Policies Started with Liberals

Canada’s Austerity Consensus

And an excerpt from this article:

The push for private, for-profit medicine really got going after the Chrétien Liberals deeply cut federal health-care funding in 1995. Ottawa had contributed 25 per cent of total health spending in 1977, but that contribution dropped down to just 9.8 per cent by the late 1990s, leaving the provinces reeling and sending hospital wait-times climbing.

Advocates of private health care eagerly moved in, and have been a loud part of the public debate ever since.

[tehshiba-thegaymer]

You’re not wrong, but would you rather be in America?

😒

[allthecanadianpolitics]

You are what’s wrong with Canadians.

Stop deflecting to the USA’s problems. I am focused on Canada’s problems, because I want them to be fixed. Canada’s problems continue to get neglected exactly because of this ‘because the USA is worse’ rhetoric.

And I am frankly sick of it. Canada underfunding its social programs is putting millions of peoples health and lives at risk. Underfunding in housing is leading to increased homelessness and forcing thousands of Canadians out of cities they now can’t afford. Underfunding in healthcare is leading to increased wait times and overcrowding and a healthcare model stuck in the past (no dental, no pharmacare). Underfunding in education is leading to students being saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, despite their being overwhelming evidence that eliminating tuition and investing in students would help everyone in society. Underfunding wages is leaving millions of Canadians below the poverty line. No province in Canada even has a $15/hour minimum wage (and even this wage level is still below the poverty line in most Canadian cities)

None of this is good and worth celebrating. I refuse to pat myself on the back and deflect blame and ignore this countries many problems because ‘lol ‘Merica’.

[justcashierthings]

when customers argue in front of you about who’s paying

[locusimperium]

I’m perennially sickened by people who distort the relationship between AIDS and the fight for state-recognized partnerships (gay marriage/civil unions/etc.). It’s not that AIDS and the backlash made people get “”socially conservative”” or “”homonormative”” or whatever the buzzwords are; it’s that the AIDS crisis illustrated how vulnerable our communities are without protections for our relationships. You can argue all you want that we shouldn’t need legal protections to be safe, but please understand that terminally ill gay men were evicted from their apartments immediately after watching their partners die horribly because they couldn’t inherit the lease or the property (or couldn’t do so without paying heavy taxes). Gay men were unable to attend the funerals of their long-term partners because homophobic parents had custody of the remains.

This still happens, in states without gay marriage; a woman in Indiana was told that she was an “unrelated third party” when she tried to arrange her wife’s cremation. Reducing this real suffering to “you want marriage rights because you want to prove you’re just like straight people” is horrible, and I don’t know how that argument ever left someone’s typing hands without them realizing that they were absolute garbage.

[umruik]

this post has stuck with me for a long enough that i’m gonna be the killjoy old queen here again, and point out a few things, mostly because i’m old enough to have been around for some of them, and have tended to hang out with older queers and trans folks since i was quite young. everything i’m going to say is about the u.s.; i don’t know how this shit played out elsewhere (especially in the european social democracies), so in other contexts the story may be quite different.

brief theoryhead moment

i’m going to go long on this because OP’s argument is, to me, exactly what walter benjamin means when he says “even the dead will not be safe if this enemy is victorious, and the enemy continues to be victorious”. over the last five or ten years, all kinds of folks have been using the dead bodies of the folks who died in the pre-96 period of the epidemic as props for arguments against left and progressive queer and trans politics - to say that white gay men should be (re?!)centered in our cultural and organizing work (as if trans women and black/latinx folks wren’t the hardest hit), to say that tearooms and other public sex institutions should be highly policed, to push for extremely restricted issue-and-campaign efforts on a (deeply anti-intersectional) identity basis. i could go on about this for quite some time, but i’ll spare you, and talk about marriage, since it’s been a prime example of this kind of thing for a few years now.

the problem at the heart of the original post is the conflation of the push for marriage with other kinds of organizing for (strategic) state recognition of relationships. in gay & lesbian politics, those have never been the same - in fact, they’ve generally been in direct opposition to each other. up to the mid-1990s, the (generally mixed between left and progressive) mainstream of the movement worked for flexible, non-identity-based structures that involved state recognition of the actual structures of folks’ actual relationships, and aimed to allow as little state control and surveillance over our relationships as possible. the push for marriage, which began in the mid-1990s, was not only directly opposed to that project, it worked to undo the victories that had been won up to that point and undermine the coalitions that had been built through that organizing.

Keep reading

[ohdamnjuly]

the provincial government is going to cover meds for everyone under 25. i’m turning 25 in less than a month rip.

[cinemove]

The first Gay Pride flag was made by a man named Gilbert Baker in 1978. He gave a meaning to each colour.

Beginners (2010) dir. Mike Mills

[piningforthefjords]

Gilbert Baker, 2 June 1951 - 31 March 2017

[femininefreak]

Mr. Rogers once sued the Klan.

[paxamericana]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Event at Ryerson Univeristy in Toronto next week on resisting Donald Trump’s agenda.

Speakers include: Desmond Cole, Kike Roach, Sandi Wemigwase and Haroon Siddiqui.

Date & Time: Tuesday, March 7th, 2017 at 6:30 PM. In ENG103.

[exeggcute]

aside from being cissexist the whole XX = female and XY = male thing is Straight-Up Wrong

AFAB people can have XO, XXX, XXXX and XY chromosomes while AMAB people have have XXYY, XYY, and XX chromosomes and since the majority of the population never has their karyotype examined,  they’ll never know that they have one of these chromosomal quirks unless that specific combination has associated symptoms, and not all of them do. you could literally have one of the aforementioned combinations without even knowing it and meanwhile you’re insisting that all AFAB people are XX and that anyone else who has this must also be female

[softkats]

we could also talk about how hormonal patterns for XX persons can naturally and biologically mirror that of a typical XY person, or vis versa, which gives rise to things like androgen insensitivity disorder. here u have it, folks, an whole group of intersex people who have XY chromosomes and testicles and vulva and vagina, all grown naturally, all at the same time. 

the number of people who are intersex mirror the number of people who are born with red hair, but no one goes around trying to say that red isn’t a natural hair colour just because the phenotype doesn’t manifest in the majority of the population. 

[millenniumitem]

#hmmmm it’s almost like the gender binary is a piece of shit

[transrants]

seriously consider the bold if you are aggressively upholding the ridiculously flawed theory that is the sex and gender binary.

[destielhiseyesopened]

Big genetics nerd here, with a biology degree for whatever that’s worth. I’ve been saying this for well over a decade (i.e. it’s not a “tumblr thing” lol). The whole “XX = woman, woman = XX” thing, ditto for XY and men, works okay as a rough guideline but it’s simply not a universal “rule”. So telling trans people “you’ll always ‘really’ be [assigned gender], because chromosomes” is scientifically ignorant nonsense for three reasons:

Sex differentiation in humans isn’t really controlled by chromosomes. In species where it is, things like bilateral gynandromorphism can occur. That’s not possible in humans, though, because our development is controlled by hormones. Our chromosomes play only a very small role.

Because people don’t know other people’s karyotypes (or even their own, most of the time), they’re just pre-selecting the conclusion they want, then “proving” it with “evidence” they don’t actually have.

Because other conditions can also produce XX men and XY women, the idea that a trans person’s karyotype determines what they “really” are is a blatant double-standard. One which exists solely to “prove” the pre-determined conclusion that cis people’s genders are valid, and trans peoples’ aren’t.

Consequently, there are only two scientifically informed, logically consistent options:

Accept that nature is more complex than one learned in 5th-grade science class, and chromosomes can’t tell someone’s “real” gender. DNA is a truly wondrous molecule, not some Magical Essence of Gender.

OR, double down and demand to see everyone’s karyotype. Refuse to respect anyone’s gender if the results aren’t what one expected. Insist that all cis people with “mismatched” karyotypes must transition against their will, and be transphobic toward them until they do.

In other words, transphobes claim to be authorities on X and Y chromosomes, yet have no clue what they’re talking about.

Cisnormative society has a bizarre obsession with finding the One True Indicator of Biological Sex. Chromosomes are just the latest answer. In the past it’s been ovarian/testicular tissue, or penis/clitoris size. What will it be fifty years from now? But whichever One True Indicator is the current fad, there’s always at least one intersex condition which contradicts it, thus exposing how ridiculous and arbitrary these indicators really are.

Not that transphobes let facts stop them, of course. If someone doesn’t fit either One True Sex, they just don’t count! (I’ve literally heard this.) Cis people with reproductive, endocrine, or urogenital disorders still “count,” of course. An XY man with a small, hypospadic penis? An XX woman born without a uterus? Eh, just a man and a woman with minor quirks. A non-XX woman or non-XY man? They ~don’t count~, because ~disorder~. What an odd coincidence that this magical gender-invalidating power of “disorder” only applies to people who threaten the all-important binary. Circular logic at its finest: the binary is real because anyone who disproves it doesn’t count, and they don’t count because if they did, they’d disprove the binary!

That isn’t science. It’s not nature, or reason. It’s bigotry, plain and simple.

[neuroqueerwicca]

Some scientific evidence to back up the gender spectrum and all my lovely nonbinaries! ^.^

[ohdamnjuly]

Just to add to all of this: Last semester in my feminist theory class, we read an article that outlined the history of "gender testing" in professional sports that attempts to "scientifically" prove who is and is not a "real" woman. There have been several different "gender tests" implemented over the years, and some athletes "failed" some of those tests while "passing" others lol

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Its begun. White people are now defending the architect of the residential school era.

This man is solely responsible for the cultural genocide of thousands of indigenous people. Thousands of indigenous children died because of this monster.

Intention does not matter. What he did was wrong in the 1800′s and it is wrong now.

The National Post has is straight out pandering to racists now.

[omegatheunknown]

You know, I would kinda hate to completely forget our historical monsters. Maybe take his name off the building and put it on a trash bin outside, with a nice little plaque explaining the fucked up shit he did and just how long we were okay with celebrating his legacy besides.

[aretethegreattelleroftales]

Ivison seems to be arguing completely different things all at once. That Langevin was a “man of his time” who did other things than be “instrumental in the establishment of the Indian Residential School System,” that support of Residential schools and genocide were widely held at the time (and so were okay?), that taking his name off would prevent us from knowing our history (no one is saying we shouldn’t include Langevin in history classes as a man who was instrumental in the oppression and genocide of Canada’s indigenous peoples, they’re saying not to honour him by having his name on a building), and that young Canadians don’t take pride in Canada’s accomplishments because they’re taught that Canada’s history is full of racists, militarists, and homophobes-which it is-but will somehow be remedied by keeping Langevin’s name on the building and excusing what he did because everyone (read: white people) at the time was as racist as he was and this will lead to young Canadians learning that Canadian history isn’t full of racists? I’m confused.

I have a minor in History. I am aware that our standards today are different than they were even a hundred years ago. That doesn’t mean you shrug off genocide and the settler colonialism that continues to this day. It means that you acknowledge that throughout our history we’ve been perfectly okay and even eager to kill indigenous peoples and their cultures, take ownership of that history, and then change it and do better in 2017. We make sure that being people of our times means something other than being oppressors. Which includes taking Langevin’s name off the building.

[something-like-a-heart]

“Langevin was a man of his time, not a monster…”

What he did was monstrous. People who are alive today are still suffering because of his genocidal legacy—the last of the residential schools closed when I was a teenager. I’m 34 now. The fact that he is responsible for so much suffering and so many deaths makes him a man of his time AND a monster.

Take his name off the building. Name it after someone who did something good, something that deserves to be honoured; preferably an Indigenous person. And put Langevin’s name in the history books—and in mandatory high school history classes—where he belongs, to be remembered as an architect of genocide, both cultural and literal.

[benepla-deactivated20180521]

male entitlement in academic spaces is so boring. can’t tell you how many times i’ve been in a class and a girl gives a short, insightful analysis, and then a dude raises his hand and says “jumping off of that…” then says literally the same thing she said but longer and worse.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Sad that it has to come to this: Private citizens funding mental health for indigenous communities going through a suicide crisis, when the Canadian government won’t.

[topsidepress-blog]

I Want A Dyke For President (1992) By Zoe Leonard, artist, activist, member of Fierce Pussy

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no airconditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harrassed and gay-bashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

[sallyhansenpacificblue]

[ohdamnjuly]

i’m trying to get my 16 year old cousin to think through stuff in a feminist way and i spent like an hour yesterday trying to explain to him why the concept of “friendzoning” is bullshit

[whatsfreebaseandwhatsfreeabouti]

[ohdamnjuly]

so a breaker flipped and i have no power in my room and my landlord hasn't responded to my email even though it's been looking like 10 hours. so i STILL have no power in my room, which is Not Great because i have to use a heater to keep my room warm at night. FUN!!!