Bedknobs & Bookshelves

just saying

WE CAN WHAT

🍁 autumn-dreamin 🍁

cannot be defeated

That last gif was what I was waiting for and I am not disappointed.

my mama on a road trip in ‘88

The verdant remains of St Brendan’s holy well in Birr, Co Offaly

Medieval sarcophagi, Bannow church, Co. Wexford 

Assorted letters from Virginia Woolf at the Smith College Rare Book Room

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

I wish that yankees could go like one day without forgetting that the South is full of people who are actively fighting against and suffering under all this stuff they just find distasteful

“They’re red states so we should just write them off”

I fucking live here

“The poor and oppressed deserve to die to pay for the crimes of their oppressors.”

–ancient yankee proverb

i wish more people could remember the amount of black people in the south lmao like…….

Mmhmm

The primary recipient of all this brutal unpleasantness as well as the primary force of positive social change in this region was, is, and remains the South’s very large Black population.

But y'all would rather just forget about all that if it means you get to have a convenient scapegoat for nationwide systemic issues & get to feel superior to The Poors.

Friendly reminder that I am still raising funds for the Black Lives Matter movement until the end of this month! Two of the drawings are exclusive to this fundraiser, so if you want a print, be sure to get one before July 31st. After that, they will no longer be available! Find the prints here: inprnt.com/gallery/loish

Profits will be split across four organizations: Equal Justice Initiative, The Okra Project, Black Voters Matter Fund, and the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective. We’ve managed to raise over $5600 so far, let’s keep it going! Thanks for all of your support so far ❤️

Woman in a Garden

Books read in 2018  l  The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

“What could I become if i stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”

@sixofcrowsnet heist: antagonist → the darkling

SLYTHERIN: “To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.” –Robert Louis Stevenson (Aes Triplex)

Happy Sunday

http://instagram.com/kateoliver

les__livres__

Some rando: You should think about stopping your prescription

Me: My pills make me not want to die tho

They: You shouldn’t want to die, that’s not normal

Me: Yeah that’s why I’m taking my pills

Again: But you aren’t the *real* you when you’re on your pills

Me: I’m the alive version of me

An actual doctor, once: “Relying On A Chemical Crutch For A Hormonal Imbalance Denies The Fortitude Of The Human Soul”

Me: Cool so like I’m agnostic

They: “But you might be on pills the rest of your life!”

Me: “So?”

Good! That means that I have a “rest of” my life to continue living!

Thanks to the pills.

Meanwhile, no person ever: “You should think about giving up your insulin/antiretrovirals/beta blockers/anti-rejection drugs/prosthetic legs/daily multivitamin, because using those your whole life is bad for some reason”

Oh no, they do that too.

I have a kidney transplant. A woman once told me she didn’t believe in organ transplants and that people should just die when they’re meant to. 

Sounds like a great set-up for a murder

People who are fully healthy, fit and neurotypical seem to think they are that way because they’re doing something right that the rest of us haven’t thought of, and not just because they got lucky

furthermore, neurotypical/healthy people are literally 100% dependent on the same chemicals and hormones as those of us on medication, it’s just that their own bodies are capable of supplying them without aid. if a neurotypical suddenly lost all their serotonin, they would ALSO be severely depressed. 

needing medication to find the equilibrium that healthy/NT people can supply themselves with doesn’t make you weak or a failure. honestly, let’s just be grateful that such medication exists rather than shaming ourselves for needing it.

Healthy people and rich people need to believe that they are that way because they are Better than other people. If things just rely on the Whims of the Universe then someday they might be not healthy or not rich. This is unacceptable.

See also denying that privilege exists so that it cannot be dismantled.