IS THIS WHERE THE STRANGE KIDS HIDE?

At least this is where I hide. Lene. 25. Germany “Es gibt Reichtümer, an denen man zugrunde geht, wenn man sie nicht mit anderen teilen kann.” ― Michael Ende, Momo

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

The Anatomy of Rage

This post is going to be a mess, because I’m just …untidily angry right now. It began with a series of tweets I made today about my ever-broken Datsun. The mechanic had told my husband that he was “working on that Datsun just as fast as I can because now that I’ve met her I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.“

Little girl.

As I tweeted that I was 33 and had earned each of those years and thus preferred to be referred to as “Danger Smog-Dragon” or “Rage-Mistress” or “Ephemeral Time Lady” or “Maggie Stiefvater, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of the Raven Cycle,” a well-meaning fellow replied that perhaps I should “use [my] words, politely but firmly, to his face…” He further observed that he’d told his wife that “you know, Honey, unless you’re willing to SAY THAT to (those people), NOTHING is going to change”.

(note: please do not go search for this fellow on twitter to rage at him; this is not about him. He is set dressing, made more appropriate to the conversation at hand by the fact that he probably is a perfectly nice guy who really didn’t mean disrespect).

I told TwitterMan that I was tired of have to use my words.It’s been 33 years of using my words. Why is it my job to continuously ask to be treated equivalent to a male customer? Why is that when I arrive at a shop, I’m reminded that I have to push the clutch in if I want to start my own car? It’s 2015. Why is it still all sexism all the time?

I discovered that I was actually furious. I thought I was over being furious, but it turns out, the rage was merely dormant. I’m furious that it’s been over a decade and nothing has changed. I’m furious that sexism was everywhere in the world of college-Maggie and it remains thus, even if I out-learn, out-earn, out-drive, and out-perform my male counterparts. At the end of the day, I’m still “little girl.”

Possibly this is the point where some people are asking why this tiny gesture of all gestures should be the one to break me.

Here is the anatomy of my rage.

Step one: It is 1999 or 2000. I am 16. I go to college. A professor tells me I’m pretty. A married man in the bagpipe band I’m in tells me he just can’t control himself around me: he stays up nights thinking of my skin. Another man tells me he can’t believe that ‘a little bitch’ like me got into the competition group after a year of playing when he’s been at it for twenty years. After becoming friends with a professor’s daughter, I’m at her house sleeping on the couch, and I wake up to find the professor running his hand from my ankle bone to my thigh. I pretend I’m still asleep. I’m 17. “If something happened to my wife,” he tells me later, “I could be with you.” At my next visit to her house, I see the wife’s left a book on the kitchen table: how to rekindle your husband’s love.

Step two: It’s 2008. I finally buy the car of my dreams, a 1973 Camaro, and make it my official business vehicle. The first time I take it to put gas in it, a man tells me, “if I were your husband, I wouldn’t want you out driving my car.” I tell him, “if you were my husband, I’d be a widow.” The car requires a lot of gas. I get cat-called every other time I’m at a gas station. Once, I go into the gas station to get a drink, and when I come out, a bunch of guys have parked me in. They want, they say, to have a word with me, little lady. We play automotive chicken which I win because I would rather smash the back of my ’73 Camaro into their IROC than have to stab one of them with the knife on my keychain.

Step three: It’s 2011. I’m on tour in a European country, on my own, escorted only by my foreign publisher. I am at a business dinner, and say I’m going to my room. My female editor embraces me; my male publicist embraces me and then puts his tongue in my ear, covering it with his hand so that the crowd of twenty professionals does not see. My choices are to say nothing to avoid making a scene in front of my publisher’s people, or to say FUCK YOU. I apparently was never offered the choice of not having a tongue in my ear.

Step four: It’s 2012. I buy a race car. Well, a rally car. Someone asks my male co-driver if I’m good in bed. Someone asks me if I got sponsorship because someone was ‘trying to check the woman box.’ People ask me if I drive like a girl. Yeah, I do, actually. Let’s play a game called: who’s faster off the start?

Step five: It’s 2014. I’m driving my Camaro cross-country on book tour. It breaks down a lot. I’m under the hood and a pick up truck stops beside me. “Hey baby,” asks the driver, “do you need any help?” “Yeah,” I reply, “do you have a 5/8 wrench?” He did not.

Step six: It’s 2015. It’s sixteen years after I learned that I was a thing to be touched and kissed and hooted at unless I took it upon myself to say no, and no again, and no some more, and no no no. My friend Tessa Gratton points out that a male author used casually sexist language in a brief interview. She is dragged through the muck for pointing out how deeply-rooted our systemic sexism is. The publishing industry rises to the defense of the male author as if he has been deeply wronged. I tweet that the language was indeed sexist, though I didn’t think it was useful to condemn said male author. A male editor emails me privately to ask me if maybe I wasn’t being a little problematic by engaging in the discussion?

Step seven. Still 2015. Someone very close to me confesses that her college boyfriend keeps trying to push her past kissing, and she doesn’t want to. I tell her to set boundaries, and leave him if he doesn’t. A month passes. This week I find out she just had sex for the first time after he urged her to have several glasses of wine. She doesn’t drink. She was crying. She says, “I didn’t say no, though.”

It’s been sixteen damn years. I’m tired of having to say no. I’m tired of the media telling me that it’s mouth breathing bros and rednecks perpetuating the sexism. No: I can tell you that the most insidious form is the nice guy. Who is a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. I carry my own prejudices that I work through, and I don’t believe in demonizing people who aren’t perfect yet — none of us are. But the nice guy who says something sexist gets away with it. The nice guy who says something sexist sounds right and reasonable. The nice guy’s not helping, though. It’s been sixteen years, and the nice guys are nice, but we’re still things to be acquired. We are still creatures to be asked on dates. We are still saying no, still shouting NO, still having to always again and again say “no, please treat me with respect.”

I was just invited to a car show; the well-meaning guy who asked wanted me to bring my souped up Mitsubishi. I clicked on the event page. It’s catered by Hooters. I’m not going. Yeah, it’s a little thing, but I have a lifetime of them. I’m taking my toys and going home.

“I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.“

[nexya]

I love how humans have literally not changed throughout history like the graffiti from Pompeii has people from hundreds of years ago writing stuff like “Marcus is gay” “I fucked a girl here” “Julius your mum wishes she was with me” and leonardo da vinci’s assistants drew dicks in their notebooks just for the banter and mozart created a piece called “kiss my ass” so when people wish for ‘today’s generation’ to be like ‘how people used to’ then we’re already there buddy we’ve always been

[charlesoberonn]

The Hagia Sophia has inscriptions that were considered sacred for centuries until they were deciphered in the 70s to be Nordic runes saying “Halfdan wrote this”

[terminallydepraved]

my old english prof told us that theres a cave in Scandinavia where a viking gratified some runes like 14 feet up on the wall and when they finally reached it all it translated into was “this is very high”

[loremerchant]

Ancient Shitposting

Now on the History Channel

[self-critical-automaton]

‘People have literally just always been people’ is genuinely my favorite fact about the world

[skaletal-deactivated20190721]

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 BC - 43 BC

[yveinthesky-deactivated20190127]

Also ich finde ja in jeder Deutschen Behörde sollte ein Brot hängen. 

Also nich angenagelt natürlich, das arme Brot. 

Nein, Brot in in ne Glaskiste, Kiste an die Wand. 

Es heißt ja auch “Unser aller Brot gib uns heute”. 

[die-partei]

dafür!

[michaelcorderoes]

This Is Us Appreciation Week  ➙ Day 1 : moment I fell in love with the show 

[pedrospascaled]

Won’t you miss looking like that (Wolverine)?

[jackmansjoy]

This is very important to me that he said this.

[marijatiurina]

Long time no see, tumblr! Anyone still here? :) Thought I’d share my latest - fruit and vegetables re-imagined as watercolor characters.  There’s an amazing greengrocer near my London home, and for the last few months I have been going over there and picking green foods I found interesting and inspiring to create characters based on those.  Hope you like it! And if you could spare a second to upvote my Bored Panda post that would be very nice of you ^_^  https://www.boredpanda.com/fruit-vegetable-watercolor-characters-marija-tiurina/ Happy last day of February!

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

[castle-engineer-deactivated2019]

This is one of those things that I already knew was true, but seeing it so blatantly displayed makes me feel like like I am finding out about it for the first time.

[pennamites-deactivated20180910]

CIA is getting lazy

[friendly-neighborhood-patriarch]

O.o

[spider-hands-mannos-deactivated]

“It’s just a script whats the problem lol” the problem is that Fox, CNN, CBS, and all the other channels repped here, despite claiming to be different companies with different viewpoints, all had the exact same script, word for word, to push the exact same viewpoint that smaller, independent news outlets are Fake News and “A Threat To Our Democracy.” The fact that they have scripts isn’t the problem. The problem is they all, each and every one, have the exact same script down to the letter and in some cases the fucking inflection, which basically reads “small news stations are untrustworthy and a Threat to your Way Of Life, only trust Us, We Are Verified.”

[v-lagopus]

For the record - every station doing this is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is known to have pro-Trump bias….

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490

[memorieswarm]

The Oscars 2018 - The Silent Child (Best Live Action Short Film)             Rachel Shenton’s speech

[tugoslavija-deactivated20161215]

Goethe-Institut did a web series a while back aimed at new arrivals in Germany and I like how it make sure to teach people that a lot of Germans are rude af

like, this is a genuine scene from an ep:

[involverad]

#Ok but for a second there I was like #this is a bit exaggerated #it’s not that rude to say hi to strangers #just a bit weird #but then I realised #the rude person is probably meant to be the one ignoring the ‘hi' 

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Well she’s obviously doing it wrong. You got to mumble “Guten Tag” in no one’s actual direction upon entering the waiting room. Then you don’t speak a word (you gotta grab a magazine though, because if you’re on your mobile people will find that asocial) until the doctor calls you and when you get back to retrieve your jacket you mumble “Auf Wiedersehen”.

If you say “Guten Tag” while sitting down it’s either because you’re passive-aggressively shaming the person you’re talking to for not saying “Guten Tag” (which is of course highly respectable, but weird if they did say it) or worse: 

You’re trying to make small-talk.

[relyabittooheavily]

See also: when entering a crowded bus, tram, subway or train, you do not say a single word. You look for an empty bench. If there are none, you will have a neighbour. You stop at an empty spot and mumble something like “tschulli-ng” or “s-nch-frei?” to the person occupying the other spot on the bench. You nod in an upward direction. They reply a mumbled “türlich” while vaguely looking somewhere near your face and moving their bag if neccessary. You sit down, nod gratefully, and keep your mouth shut for the rest of the ride. Neither of you wanted this. You wanted freedom. Don’t bother each other.

If an entire bench in front of you becomes available at the next stop, though, it is not the polite thing to free your neighbour and yourself up. No, you stay right where you are. The silent stranger next to you is your silent stranger now.

Welcome to Germany. This is how we express love.

[rohamburger]

None of these people are joking.

[ilikesallydonovan]

And if you’re the one sitting at the window and you want to get off at the next stop, you begin to loudly rustle with your bag whatever, because that way you can signal the other person that you need them to get up without having to speak to them.

[regenerative-farming]

these are the rules

[devikawrites-deactivated2015082]

A woman’s first blood doesn’t come from between her legs but from biting her tongue.

Meggie Royer, The No You Never Listened To (via theflowershop)

[vladtheunfollower]

women have a hard time refusing a coffee order that someone got wrong because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and people are surprised that we get manipulated during the very vulnerable and threatening atmosphere of sex with men

[micdropragnarok]

Is it even a fanfiction if she doesn’t let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding

[buzzfeedrewind]

[randomfandomteacher]

Feeling 👵🏻

[memorieswarm]

From Hollyoaks to Hollywood?

Two former stars of the Channel 4 soap could be jetting to LA if their short film lands an Oscar nomination.

God, I love Rachel Shenton. 

[stevenrogered]

things Natalie Portman did: THAT

[mrgaretcarter]

[vonisv]

I was thinking about why I prefer to read manga over American comics (as in, monthly serialized comics) and, putting aside opinions about the “quality” of either medium, I think the reason why is because I have absolutely no idea how American comics work.

Say you’re a complete noob to manga. You don’t know shit about it. But that One Piece thing you saw on TV looks really cool and you want to read it. Where do you start? Volume 1 and go from there. 

But imagine the same situation but with comics. You just saw the new Spiderman movie and now you got a craving for more like it. Where do you begin? Well, no one knows because there’s been 901823434^34 different iterations of the character for decades.

With manga, there’s usually one guy (and maybe a team of artists under them to help) working on it. Even if it goes on for years or may switch leads, there’s usually some “consistency” to keep everything in check. With American comics on the other hand, it’s the complete opposite: you have multiple different writers and artists, each contributing their own take on the character: alternate timelines, alternate motifs, etc etc. It’s all a big clusterfuck to me and I have no idea how anyone can keep track of it all.

[opticbread]

i wanna read spiderman, where do i start?

“well, you’ll have to choose one of the major points in the series to start at and then switch between different iterations depending on what kind of tone you’re looking for“

i wanna read jojo, where do i start?

“volume 1“

[alexxdz]

“I want to read X-Men and Wolverine, where do I start?”