everything is a miracle

hi i'm lena leo sun/sag rising/aries moon

[astrologymarina]

Even if women earned the same money and claimed as many top executive positions as men, that would still not assume that women have reached true equality with men; all that would conclude is that we have successfully been able to squeeze the round peg of woman’s desire into the square hole of the masculine world.

Rachael Jane Groover (via astrologymarina)

[velvetabovegroundpool-deactivat]

2015 in review

-lot of days. dozens(?) at least -hours: even more of those -minutes: 525,600 -seconds: don’t even get me started

[proletherian-dictatorship]

Transgender liberation won’t happen until capitalism is overthrown. Not only is capitalism the force that sustains patriarchal forms of oppression, but a lot of the oppression we face as trans people are often things which are inheritely bound to capitalism. Trans people are overrepresented in issues of poverty (even in the cases of society being rich), homelessness (despite there being empty houses), unemployment (despite tons of work that needs to be done), etc. The list goes on and on.

But rich trans people have no interests in addressing this. It doesn’t affect them, and addressing these problems would require them to acknowledge their position of unearned privilege, wealth & power. Instead, they seek to address the transphobic ideas prevalent in society, while ignoring the material oppression whose justification made these ideas necessary. They want a capitalism less transphobic against the rich. But the transphobia faced by the rich is just the tip of the iceberg: most transphobia is faced by working class trans people (and especially those trans workers who are part of oppressed nations, like the internally colonized Black nation in the U.S.) 

Working class trans people have no interests in common with the rich people that liberals praise as “representation”. We will only be able to begin a real fight against transphobia when society no longer relies on patriarchy, when capitalism is abolished.

[humanafteralll]

Visit Original Link

The Cure- Why Can’t I Be you? 

[blackberryshawty]

I’m a wine mom but with a vodka aunt moon and a beer dad ascendant

[20aliens-deactivated20200625]

MYANMAR (Burma). Airport. 2002 Patrick Zachmann

[thisishangingrockcomics-deactiv]

keep thinking abt this blog description

[flashofgod-deactivated20190121]

Bastienne Schmidt, The Laundry and Mac Mansions, Bridgehampton, 2008.

[girlswamparchived2017]

hey lesbians, bi women, pan women and other women loving women…..keep up the good work ur doing great :0)

[binah-lance]

man, teenaged girls aren’t allowed to have a genuine interest in anything without being ridiculed for it. if a girl likes ugg boots and starbucks she’s stupid and stereotypical, but if she likes combat boots and obscure coffee houses she’s a hipster wannabe and is trying too hard. if a girl listens to boy bands and other popular artists she’s a dumb follower, if she reads comics or plays video games she’s a poser/fake geek girl, if she likes sex she’s a slut but if she doesn’t like sex she’s a prude, if she wears makeup she’s fake but if she doesn’t wear makeup she’s a slob, if she has low self-esteem she needs to learn to love herself but if she has high self-esteem she’s overconfident and vain, if she’s interested in politics she’s a crazy social justice warrior but if she prefers to stay out of social matters she’s a dumb airhead. girls are literally mocked for every single thing they like or do, no matter what those things are, and i’m really really sick of it.

[bridgeverse]

Tbh stop treating cigarette smokers like shit. The intersections of smoking, minority stress, mental illness, and poverty are *undeniable.* Nicotine is an appetite suppressant, a cigarette is cheaper than a meal. Smoking is hella prevalent in people w/ eating disorders. It’s used to self-medicate adhd, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Cigarettes are cheaper than mental health care for the uninsured. It could also be a habit someone undiagnosed picks up. Cigarettes are one of the most socially acceptable ways to self-harm, you won’t get fired for smoking but you could/would get fired if you came to work with visible self-harm scars. Lots of people start smoking *because* it’s bad for you. All oppressed groups are more vulnerable to addiction than the general population (minority stress) and nicotine is a relatively low (immediate) risk outlet for addiction/pleasure seeking behavior. 

This means that when you are openly talking shit about smokers, you are probably talking about poc, mentally ill people, queer people, poor people etc. At this point, it’s pretty safe to assume people know cigarettes are terrible for them, they are probably smoking for a reason. I’m not defending smoking, I’m not saying it is not bad for you. I’m saying if you actually want to help people, start addressing WHY people smoke. Protect vulnerable people and fight the systems that make them vulnerable. 

[scaredofmonsters]

[thiscouldbethebestplaceyet]

[sixth-impact-deactivated2017041]

I’m sorry but why the fuck is the redneck one in there?

[missalsfromiram-deactivated2020]

@sixth-impact That’s not a “redneck”, that’s an Appalachian student who attends Ohio University. The prejudice in your comment reveals exactly why that poster needed to be included - people from Appalachia, one of the poorest regions in the entire United States, are presumed to be less intelligent, to be “inbred”, “hicks”, and “rednecks” everywhere they go by people like you for the way they speak, as well as for their lifestyle and economic circumstances. As someone who actually helped make these posters and spoke to the Appalachian students who requested its inclusion, I can tell you that this issue is not and should not be a joke.

[j0ltc0la]

To anyone who saw my reblog where I said that the inclusion of the white guy was almost certainly about anti-Appalachian bias, I was right. Here it is from someone actually involved in the making of those posters.

[afloweroutofstone]

Discrimination against people from Appalachia is actually an issue, both historical and modern, and that’s why I always cringe when we intellegent and enlightened whites always take potshots at “hillbillies.” It is not a form of “reverse racism”, it’s a category of discrimination that should be looked at in its own right as a sui generis phenomenon.

Many people of Appalachian origin are the descendants of Celtic, Irish, and Scottish slaves and indentured servants, which, in the words of Ohio University social work professor Susan Sarnoff, means that:

…white Appalachians share histories that are often closer to those of African-American slaves than of other white immigrants–they were brought against their will, without family, property, prospects or preparation for the changes they would face in this country. 

Historically speaking, Appalachia has also been the victim of a model of natural resource extraction that resembles what’s seen in third world nations, so much so that some scholars have even referred to it as an example of American colonialism. Coal was mined by workers in horrible working conditions and then exported to other parts of the nation for use by exploitative companies, with very little of the benefits ever returning to the workers in the form of either income or infrastructure and economic development. At the same time, there was also widespread extraction by the lumber industry. It’s no wonder that so much of American labor organization has occurred in the mining industry, in order to fight back against these conditions. 

As a result of this model of extraction, poverty has always been enormously high in Appalachia, and it remains so today: 16 of the 100 lowest-income counties in America are in Eastern Kentucky. I go to school in the North Carolina mountains, and my county has a 27% poverty rate, almost double the national average of 15%. I once drove no more than 20 miles off campus on some back roads and found a one-room shack that I believe someone was living in.

Appalachians who want to escape this poverty by moving elsewhere faced discrimination by others. According to historian Ronald Eller’s book, “Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945″:

Convinced that Appalachians were ignorant, lazy, unclean, and sometimes immoral, community leaders bemoaned their arrival as “a sore to the city and a plague to themselves” and blamed them for rising crime, congestion, and a host of other urban maladies. “In my opinion they are worse than the colored,” complained a Chicago police captain. “They are vicious and knife happy… I can’t say this publicly, but you’ll never improve the neighborhood until you get rid of them.”

Using imagery similar to that applied to other migrant populations, especially African Americans from the Deep South, northerners developed a repertoire of ethnic hillbilly jokes that reflected deep-seated fears and a misunderstanding of mountain culture. Many of the jokes poked fun at the lack of education, sophistication, and resources of mountain migrants; others cruelly implied immorality and ignorance.

Because of this, anti-Appalachian discrimination is recognized by the government of the city of Cincinnati, whose legal code explicitly includes discrimination against people of “Appalachian regional origin” in their legal definition of “discriminate”.

Discrimination of that sort, in fact, led to eugenics programs in this country getting their Constitutional justification. In the Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell in 1927, a white 18-year-old rape victim and middle school dropout from Virginia named Carrie Buck was ordered to be forcibly sterilized due to her allegedly poor mental capacities (she was actually a woman of average intelligence from what I understand, but it doesn’t really matter). The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that her sterilization was Constitutional and preventing what was seen as white trash from breeding was in the legitimate public interest of Virginia. In the ruling, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. commented that Buck, her mother, and her child were all “feeble-minded,” and that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The case upheld the legitimacy of sterilization programs all over the nation that inevitably went on to be used against women of color, and was even used by Nazi doctors to justify their actions at the Nuremburg trials.

These negative perceptions- lazy, uneducated, uncultured, white trash hillbillies- is still prevalent and accepted in society today. Their association with parts of Appalachian culture (the accent and dialect comes to mind) allows for continued discrimination today. This isn’t “boo hoo why isn’t there a white history month” stuff, this is a group of culturally distinct people who have faced unique forms of historical discrimination and oppression that persists in various forms today.

[kristoffersonsanpablo]

Waterfall.  2014.  Oil & acrylic on canvas.  8 x 10"

[mashallahmangoes-deactivated201]

the amount of ‘bernie sanders is a cinnamon roll’ type posts on my dash are alarming… putting your whole trust in politicians to be perfect is a dangerous idea like i get that he’s bringing hope to people and that’s lovely, but u gotta keep up the critical thinking when it comes to politicians

[nokiabae]

Princess Nokia - Dragons | dir. Milah Libin & Arvid Logan (2014)

[bemmar]

“I have this reputation from ‘insiders’ for being difficult, but people only considered me difficult because I wouldn’t just agree with everything they said. Like, 50-year-old men telling me how to be a woman! Seriously, I used to get nagged about combing my hair. They would tell me I needed more makeup and that I had circles around my eyes. I’ve had that since elementary school – I used to get called zombie.”

–Sky Ferreira