never let me go.

annie. taiwanese canadian. 23 years old. infj. bisexual. cis. she/her. feminist. pro-choice. athiest. learning to live and living to learn.

[jerzee55z]

© Andrey Fedoseev (per@)

[sunrec]

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clapclap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (via soracities)

I did not expect that to be a CS Lewis quote.

Also, dear lord, yes.

(via conductivemithril)

Holy FUCK.

(via kyraneko)

[bazaardotco]

[autumncozy]

By Aleksandr Rusanyuk

[mediumyikes]

I’m home alone with the tv repair man

Im no fool, there is only two possible outcomes of this scenario

porn or murder

[mediumyikes]

Apparently there was an unforeseen third outcome where he fixes the tv and then leaves

[raquelmurillolapiz]

Kabby || “I love you to the mountains and back”

[gojiro]

Fun Vampire Fact; the reason that Vampires traditionally cannot see their reflections in a mirror is because mirrors used to be backed with a reflective layer of silver — which, as the metal of purity, would not ‘interact’ with Vampires, who are the Devil’s work.

However, modern mirrors have used aluminum as their reflective backing for many years now — and aluminum is not a ‘picky’ metal at all. So Vampires are able to see their reflections in modern mirrors.

[roseate-rein]

All I can think about is a vampire used to not seeing their reflection in mirrors for centuries, and one day they are just walking along and unknowingly pass a mirror backed with aluminum and THEY NEARLY SHIT THEMSELVES.

[skysinger-musings]

[curtindoasvibes]

[rainy-autumn-day]

[afrafemme-blog]

A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.

“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”

Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.

My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.

“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”

Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.

“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.

What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.

Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.

And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?

[luvlyhuman-deactivated20150629]

I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.

[bebinn]

Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!

Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.

[geshertzarmeod]

Teaching Consent to Small Children

[lotesseflower]

I wish this post featured the OP’s name more prominently; it’s by Libby Anne of love joy feminism, and she writes fantastic stuff. A survivor of Christian patriarchal fundamentalism, she writes about parenting from the perspective of someone working through her own traumatic experiences. I love reading her blog.

[sylviasybil]

I met my nephew (codename Totoro) in person for the first time when he was eight months old. Before this, I’d known him only through video calling. A few hours after getting home from the airport, my sister (codename Mystery) was holding him on her hip. I asked her, “Can I hold him?”

She smiled and said, “Ask him.”

“What?”

“Hold out your hands to him and see if he leans toward you or away from you.” So I did, and he leaned away, and I dropped the subject. Five or ten minutes later, he was leaning towards me, overbalancing and almost falling out of Mystery’s arms, and she said, “He’s asking you to hold him now.” So I did, and it was magical, getting to introduce myself to my nephew and the firstborn of the Sybil family.

I am all about respecting children’s agencies and teaching good boundaries. I didn’t ask at the airport, when Totoro was surrounded by new stimuli and needed the reassurance of his mother. I didn’t ask when we first got back either; I gave him time to settle down, get used to his surroundings, and get used to me in person instead of a moving picture on a cell phone screen. I thought I was respecting his boundaries. But it had never occurred to me that an eight month old, who couldn’t speak or even understand most speech, might be able to establish his own boundaries.

A year later they came to visit again, when he was 19 or 20 months old. The weather was what we Northwesterners call “a bit nippy” and what thin-blooded Midwesterners like my sister call “fucking freezing, are you kidding me?” As we were getting ready to leave the house, Totoro objected vehemently to the need for pants and a coat. Finally Mystery had me stand by and hand her things as she near-literally wrestled him into his clothes. He was screaming and kicking and saying, “No pants, no no, don’t wanna, no Mama.”

And as she worked, Mystery kept talking to him soothingly. “I can hear you saying no, and I understand that you don’t want to wear your clothes, but it’s my job to keep you safe and warm. I know you’re saying no, I can hear that, but it’s very cold outside and I have to keep you safe and warm.” Over and over, reassuring him that she understood what she wanted and that she had a good reason for ignoring his wishes.

And it hit me all over again, an aspect of respecting children’s agencies and boundaries that had never once occurred to me. Because sometimes it is necessary to override their wishes. Part of being a good guardian is keeping them safe even when they want to play in traffic or eat nothing but candy. But I’d never thought about it from Totoro’s point of view, how frightening and how helpless it would feel to scream “no” into an unhearing void. Mystery made sure he knew he was being heard, he wasn’t being ignored, he was important enough to have people react to his words.

It’s just, geez. Every time I watch Mystery interact with Totoro I learn something new about agency and boundaries and just plain humanness. It blows me away.

[califaphotos]

[califaphotos]

[califaphotos]

[califaphotos]

[spi-ltmilk]

https://instagram.com/p/BSmin36jO8I/

[rapeculturerealities]

The Shocking Connection Between Street Harassment And Street Lighting

Street lighting has a known impact on women’s safety. So why do city planners consider it a ‘gender-neutral’ issue?

t is a well known fact — amply documented — that women face greater amounts of street harassment and violence than men. Additionally, a new study conducted by Harvard researchers reveals that a vast majority — 87% — of U.S. women ages 18–34 have endured sexual harassment or violence.

What is less clear are the reasons behind why some of these problems persist, and what can be done about them.

If we roll the clock back to 2008 during the economic recession in the United States, many cities began to reduce the amount of street lighting in an effort to cut costs. These marginal cost-saving measures had a disproportionately negative effect on women and women’s safety. In the years after, cases of gender-based street harassment and violence spiked in some cities. In 2014, San Diego reported six cases in one neighborhood aloneduring a two-month span in which women were physically assaulted on dimly lit streets. In Oakland, California, overall crime rates rose citywide after a reduction in street lighting.

The relationship between poor street lighting and gender-based violence is global and widespread. Cities across India, for example, added thousands of street lights to improve the safety of women traveling at night in response to safety concerns women communicated.

Walking alone at night shouldn’t be something that women have to fear. We have the ability to create streets where women are comfortable using the public space they have a right to, and are safe in doing so. But at the same time, the people in power to make street lighting decisions, such as policy-makers, urban planners, and city engineers — who, let’s not forget, are overwhelmingly cis white males — often claim to take a “gender neutral approach” to street lighting.

[smitethestate]

This tells me that street harassers 100% know they’re doing something bad.

[truhely]

[aluerhe]

~