Growing Everyday

Cassie, she/her, (twenty-something), my blog has a little bit of everything. Anything that I love is on here Feel free to ask me anything or message me Hufflepuff/ May Taurus / another quantifier

[theartofmadeline]

happy pride to the gay people in my computer <3

[elizabitchtaylor-deactivated202]

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

[chemicalheart-deactivated202009]

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

[thelingerieaddict-deactivated20]

I never knew this.

[dsudis]

I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most people’s windows were closed) tried to help in some way.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

(Also, going by the content of the murderer’s confession, it was indeed a random attack.)

[talesofthestarshipregeneration]

how on EARTH was this “scientifically” studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go!  That’s how it gets taught as this supposed “scientific study.”  Someone got fucking lazy.

Spread the real deal, kids.

[tehriz]

A book about this, “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!

[racefortheironthrone]

I want to add one crucial but telling detail: the story about the 38 witnesses didn’t come out of nowhere, it was handed to the New York Times City Editor by the Police Commissioner in order to distract said editor from asking unwelcome questions about a different case, and the story that was eventually written and which made headlines was almost entirely composed from police sources. 

At the time, the NYPD was coming under quite a bit of criticism about rising crime rates and the seeming ineffectiveness of the police’s response to the problem. In the Kitty Genovese case, even though people did in fact call the police, it took about an hour for them to show up and the first detectives didn’t arrive until three hours later (at which point they mostly spent their time interrogating Kitty’s girlfriend about their relationship, because for “some reason” they considered her to be the most likely suspect for the murder. In fact, the police wouldn’t catch the actual killer until six days later when he was picked up for having a stolen TV in the trunk of his car, at which point he admitted to having committed a total of three murders). It’s not an accident that one of the things to come out of the Genovese case was the establishment of the 9-1-1 system, because at the time that the attack happened, you had to call the specific number of a particular police precinct and it was up to the duty sergeant on the desk to take action - which was usually to send someone out from the precinct to the address reported, because cops on foot patrol wouldn’t be outfitted with two-way radios for several years. It’s more than a little convenient that at a time when the NYPD is coming in for public scrutiny about its ability to do the basic job of responding to reports of crimes in a timely fashion, the Police Commissioner happens to hand the City Editor of the city’s most prominent newspaper a story which puts the blame for the slow response on the apathy and inaction of New Yorkers, neatly absolving the NYPD for its ridiculously poor performance in this case in particular and its response to the rise in crime in general. 

It’s also quite telling that the New York Times ran with the story the way they did. It’s not like there weren’t people on the scene who said they had called the police, or that the basic facts about how many witnesses there were and what they had seen didn’t match the account that the commissioner had given. The writer the Times sent out chose not to include this information because “it would have ruined the story.“ The Times wanted to frame the story as a narrative about how the root of NYC’s problems was urban apathy and anomie - and the news organizations that picked up on the Times’ reporting and made the Kitty Genovese case a national and global story wanted to frame the story as proof that NYC was a dangerous urban jungle that deserved its decline because of the bad character of its residents.  I think the takeaway from this case isn’t just about sloppy scientific research, it’s that you have to always consider how official narratives are used to assign blame to specific individuals and groups and absolve larger institutions of responsibility. 

[jellyfishforest135]

Activated them like sleeper agents

[adventures-in-instant-ramen]

[hurtmuscle]

washed my car so i could show off my The Thing bumper sticker corner

[andthepeople]

always funny to remember darth vader is anakin skywalker. the adrenaline junkie chucklefuck who used to dive head first out of speeders and built a pod racer in his yard when he was like six is now upper-middle management for the evil empire. half of his appearances in the original trilogy are Meetings. vader spends like 80% of his time dealing with bureaucratic bullshit. status updates. team meetings. holo-Zooms. budget rundowns. anakin betrayed the jedi and caused the fall of the republic and his punishment is being CC'd on every email forever. and you know what. he would hate that. the punishment fits the criminal

[anxietyproblem]

[hr-rep]

Shane’s final form once he is retired is Bigfoot impersonator. People know he’s alive bc he’s in the edges of Ilya’s photos, he shows up for Irina foundation events, and maybe you’ll see a hand on Rose or Svetlana’s instagram every so often, his back on a Cen’s post.

[skysurie]

"Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it."

[endlesslogo]

Finally finished 🤗🤙📸📸📸😋😋😋

Drew it for so long that I no longer remember why I wanted to draw it so badly

[atomicwrongs]

I also ☝️ think it's important to tell the difference between "the author's barely-disguised fetish" and "the audience member's unrealised kink that they're projecting onto the author because seeing a character tied up is making them feel funny in their Audience Member Parts"

[abyssalaquarist00]

pick up that non-fiction book

[abyssalaquarist00]

not all of us can live in fantasy 100% the time like i see some people on here do and it's refreshing to learn something new. its been philosophy, essays, and history for me and i feel much more at home on planet Earth for it knowing that people have been struggling and wishing similarly for millenia.

its not that fiction doesnt have its place, its important and healthy to exercise the imagination, but non-fiction can do so much to boost and supplement that. if not for yourself, for your art or for the people you're around

[abyssalaquarist00]

"representation matters!" but you wont read or engage with non-fiction works about any demographic outside your own

[abyssalaquarist00]

this version of the post doesnt seem to be getting much traction but this is arguably the most important reason why we should be reading nonfiction in addition to fiction

[shanehollandered]

vegas hotel room is actually off the charts with vulnerability that both of them see but neither acknowledges. like, what do you mean shane starts saying he needs something, opening himself up to scrutiny, and tries to get out of it by telling Ilya he knows, only for ilya to insist shane tell him explicitly, laying himself bare by admitting that he needs to hear shane say those words, and shane obliges so easily, “you” which is crazy, because even that single little word hits ilya like a freight train. you can see it in the way he breathes hard, fraying apart at the seams and only barely holding on, and then fucking shane ‘i will disarm you with my earnestness’ hollander follows it up with, “i need you.” that’s a fucking insane thing to say and he does it anyway, and ilya is still reeling from that freight train and now fighting for his life. the way he so quickly just caves and gives shane what he needs is an admission in and of itself. and like. y’all. i can’t. this is like emotional whackamole and somehow they land a hit every time.

[eraserheadadult]

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

[standardlilith]

i've never seen anybody's shit get rocked so hard in a k-drama until the king's affection! and getting his shit rocked by a secret!girl omfgggg!!!!!

[nothingwronghere]

[waiting-for-nobody]

Omg she doesn't say it 😭

[freespirit-rei]