CONFESSION:

Everyday I look back at ME1 and wish Shepard had been allowed to romance anyone of any gender.

Garrus your lines still hit hard and your bromance is forever remembered.

I cannot recall watching a battle as intense as, fighting to save your arch angel ass as male Shepard.

ME1 at least had the excuse of really trying to do too much in a single game (the amount of worldbuilding in it is pretty staggering); the real failure in this regard is ME2, which had lined up some potential same-sex romances but backed off of them because of some conservative idiots raising a stink about the potential for a wlw romance in the first game.

Here’s a not so friendly reminder:

Just because you have received the vaccine does NOT mean you can just do whatever you want now and stop wearing a mask and social distancing. The pandemic is still happening.

If the virus continues to spread, we give it more opportunities to mutate and adapt, which could lead to a variant that’s immune to the vaccine, which would mean everything we’ve been doing would be a waste of time. Until enough people get the vaccine and herd immunity is achieved, keep following the rules, wash your hands, social distance, and wear a mask.

The vaccine also doesn’t necessarily stop you from getting and spreading COVID, it’s meant to keep you from having a serious or fatal reaction to covid. It’s supposed to make it much harder for you to get COVID at all but it doesn’t actually make you 100% immune.

So being vaccinated probably means you can personally relax when going out but should still be wearing a mask in public and avoiding non vaccinated high risk people.

Seriously, folks, by now you should ignore any attempts by the government to weaken the restrictions, and KEEP masking & washing & distancing.

“But Jean, WHEN do we ease off??”

When it’s been 6 months between cases.

NEW ZEALAND got it right.

And when they had a returning flare-up of just a few people, they locked down HARD.

WE ARE NOT DOING THAT.

THIS MEANS WE WILL KEEP HAVING CASES IN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS.

The only way to STOP that is to KEEP MASKING, GLOVING, DISTANCING.

“Just Keep Maskinging Just Keep Distancing...!”

Texts From Superheroes

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TIL that there's more than one list of medical problems that pre-serum Steve had.

Lesbian!

OP left out the third tweet talking about asexuality haha

Bi asexual 😍😍😍😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Lesbian asexual????

GUYS I LITERALLY HAVE A POSTER OF HER ON MY WALL BECAUSE SHE WAS SUCH A HUGE PART OF MY GAY AWAKENING I FEEL SO VALIDATED RIGHT NOW

WE FEEL VALIDATED IN THIS HISTORY TONIGHT

Just wanted to share this for my ace lesbian followers! Marilyn Monroe was most probably one of us asexuals, even if she didn’t know about/use the terms we use to describe ourselves today. Reading these excerpts is almost the textbook experiences of aces before we find out community.

-FemaleWarrior™

I really like “it was like hearing all the time that stove polish was the greatest invention on earth.” Because yes, that’s exactly the sentiment of the disconnect.

don’t care didn’t ask, plus you’re not my slutty bisexual male wife who lives in my mind rent free

[Image: the first image is a screenshot of Deanna Troi with an exasperated expression that has been edited with a speech bubble to suggest she is saying the above text.

The second image is a screenshot of B'elanna Torres with an annoyed expression. It has the same speech bubble edit. End.]

This is why baby boomers think we can pay for school while having a part time job

im so mad

this is why they should all shut the hell up forever

Couple of things worth pointing out:

When will this end? When will our children be able to live without fear of being criminalized for simply existing?

Click here for over 1,000 free social justice, mental health, and academic resources. Let’s make education and activism accessible to all.

And people wonder how it’s even POSSIBLE that children have been kidnapped from their parents, by our Government and in the thousands, then confined in Concentration Camps at the border?

It’s easy when you don’t see those children as Human Beings.

This is what we’ve been fighting since this countries inception.

The fight has never been paused, on-hold, or OVER & isn’t LIKELY to be ANY of those things for a LONG time.

how fucking done do you think sisko was when he got the “heyyyyyy so we need commander worf for a week, turns out we left our robot on this pre-warp planet and we have to go get him :(” voicemail from picard and meanwhile the dominion war is literally still happening 

Just imagine Worf coming back from Insurrection and everyone on the station has just seen the weekly casualty list and they're like, "Hey, Worf, must have been pretty important for you to be called back to the E-E like that" and he's like "Yeah, sure", and inside he's thinking, "I had to sing Gilbert and Sullivan to catch Data when he went rogue, and then I got a zit."

Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyudmila Pavlichenko.    Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper credited with 309 kills, she is regarded as the most successful female sniper in history. She visited with President Franklin Roosevelt, becoming the first Soviet citizen to be welcomed at the White House. Afterward, Eleanor Roosevelt asked Lyudmila to accompany her on a tour of the country and tell Americans of her experiences as a woman in combat. Pavlichenko was only 25, but she had been wounded four times in battle. ↳ more х,х,х | gifs from Battle for Sevastopol 2015 trailer.

this is her 

"ooh you hate cops but who are you gonna call when you get robbed?" uhhhhh your moms house? a great tragedy has befallen me and i need to have sex immediately

Every time someone’s like “who are you gonna call when you get robbed?”

1. Know how I know you’ve never been robbed?

2. I am going to call my insurance company and file a claim, the only usefulness a cop has at this point is generating a report number for said insurance company to refer to

3. Seriously all a cop’s gonna do after establishing that the robber/burglar/whoever isn’t there anymore is say “what do you want me to do about it?” and leave

Also:

So, ya know.

SMH at people who think that cops investigate burglaries. Maybe in the better neighborhoods, or very occasionally somewhere else if there's an election and one candidate is promising to hold cops accountable and the other one is promising to raise their salaries.

Spoon Theory & “Appropriation”

So since Tumblr decided to drop this the first time that I posted it, here’s a briefer version of this:

I’ve been seeing it go ‘round the internets that ‘using the spoon theory when you are not disabled is appropriation.’

Lemme be the first person to say that a) that is not a universally-held view in the spoonie community b) we don’t have any universally-held views, c) I actually think that view is actively harmful and d) I’m not interested in arguing about it, just please stop saying “this is so.”

This is not so. You are not the gatekeeper to who can or cannot use a word. Unless you are the writer of the original spoon theory essay, you cannot say who can and cannot use that phrase.

Now, on to why I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

1) As neologisms become more common, they become more useful. If an able-bodied friend says “I’m running low on people spoons, can we skip the next thing?” I say “sweet, yes, I was feeling the same thing, let’s go home and watch TV.” Those able-bodied people are speaking my language, and they understand what I mean when I say spoons, and that’s because they’ve taken the time to figure out what that phrase means and how it works and how to use it. HOO-FUCKING-RAY.

2) Using “appropriation” in relation to a word that is younger than my middle dog is, uh, not good, y’all. Appropriation is for white people wearing dreadlocks and girls at Coachella wearing bindis and fucking Chief Illiniwek and the Redskins. Appropriation is for Whole Foods putting peanuts in collard greens and white girls with no training or appreciation painting their hands with random hearts and flowers in henna and buying cheap-ass turquoise jewelry made in China rather than getting it from Native artists. 

Spoonie culture is a baby culture. (Note: this does not apply to all disabled culture, for example D/deaf culture is pretty long-lived.) We should maybe just chill the fuck out before we start yelling appropriation! because yes our problems are many but people using spoon theory to describe how tired they are is not one of them. 

3) AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: By saying “able-bodied people should not use this,” you are setting yourself and other visibly or openly disabled persons as gatekeepers for the use of this term. You are saying: “you better be out about your disability or you can’t use it, because we’re gonna drag you/call you out about it.”

No one - not you, not me, not anybody else - gets to check anybody’s Cripple Card ™, unless it’s the police literally checking to see if I have my wallet card for my disability placard with me. No one does. No one gets to say “nah, you’ve only got anxiety, you’re not disabled enough.” No one gets to say “you have to disclose your disability or you do not get to use this term.”

Because that’s basically what the upshot of this is: unless you are openly out as disabled, you will not be able to use this term without fear of repercussion – and this site especially is fucking heartlessly beastly sometimes. We eat our own, especially in this baby community of spoonies where we should take best care of each other. 

So, tl;dr: please stop saying ‘this is appropriative’ like we had some spoonie meeting and decided on it, because we didn’t; use of a term makes it more accessible; appropriation as a term doesn’t actually belong to us, we should kinda stay in our lanes here; and please think through what it means when you say ‘no one able-bodied should use this.’ It means you’re saying you feel like you get to determine who can use a term, therefore who is disabled enough, therefore you’re gonna be checking Cripple Cards™ at the door.

No you’re not. 

(Yes, I realize some disabled persons feel Cripple is a slur. I use it as a word of pride. I will not star it out. If it offends you, I’m sorry for the hurt that causes you, but I will not stop using it.)

I’m going to highlight one part of this:  “…you are setting yourself and other visibly or openly disabled persons as gatekeepers for the use of this term.“  This is doubly problematic because not all visibly disabled people are spoonies. 

Look, I’m disabled: visibly, openly, proudly.  I’m paraplegic and I use a wheelchair, so my disability is not something I could hide even if I wanted to. What I’m not, however, is a spoonie, when we describe “spoonie“ as “someone with a chronic illness or disability that regularly impacts their energy levels and/or ability to get things done“.  I use a wheelchair, yes, but I have no problems whatever with energy or getting stuff done (aside from just generally being lazy).

So when people try to gatekeep this terminology and say that only disabled people can use it (which, as stated above, really means only visibly or openly disabled people can use it), what I hear is:  “Hey!  You there, in the wheelchair!  I’ve decided that you are Disabled Enough to use the spoon theory.  I know nothing about you or your disability, but you look crippled so I have decided that I know what you can and cannot do.“

So when you try to play gatekeeper for this, what you’re really doing is giving the rest of us bingo on the “ableist shit” scorecard.  You’re telling us that:

Long story short:  as a visibly disabled person who is not a spoonie, I am not okay with being designated some kind of judge of who is and isn’t disabled, and I’m frankly offended that people think they get to put me in that position by proclaiming that certain words are only for “”real”” disabled people. 

I have some fucking magical followers, y'all. Read all this.

For those who might not be aware, Spoon Theory was invented by a woman named Christine Miserandino as a way of explaining what it was like to have Lupus. So using it to actively exclude people with invisible illnesses/disabilities on the grounds they aren’t disabled enough? Pretty much goes against Spoon Theory’s entire purpose.   

I am not openly disabled, but “gotta wash my spoons” has been an amazingly useful shorthand for “I’m starting to feel like I’m reaching a stress trigger point, I’m going to do self-care right now and I’ll catch up with you when I can” without having to either go into detail or explain the entire backstory to people who are curious about PTSD at exactly the time I’m not capable of doing so.

So yeah, let’s get it further out into the mainstream use, and make it respectable and immediately understood.  Help more people, not fewer.

Spoon theory being spread and used more also helps people who thought they were completely healthy because they don’t LOOK sick realize that they actually are not completely healthy and something may be wrong. If you have to start counting spoons to interact with people and do day to day chores you start to realize hey… maybe there’s something wrong…

This is a freaking blessed thread 

Washing my spoons is a term I am using now. Thank you.

I started using the spoon theory before I had my diagnosis. I still had fibromyalgia; I just wasn’t diagnosed yet. So I was in that strange space where I wasn’t diagnosed and so wasn’t ‘officially disabled’ yet, but using the spoon theory allowed me to talk about my experiences, even though I hadn’t had confirmation as to what was wrong yet.

I prefer to compare my shit to spell slots because it’s more logical to me, but regardless of what “theory” you use to describe it, the whole point of the spoon theory (which kicked off the others I’ve seen) was for people who didn’t look sick or disabled and were thus expected to not struggle the way they did.

Stop this gatekeeping - it’s literally the opposite of what the spoon theory was supposed to accomplish.

Yep yep yep. Relative levels of ability in any regard are a thing. Also, too--and this touches on Tumblr's perennial and profound ageism problem--the number of spoons that anyone has diminishes with age, regardless of their relative level of ability when they're younger. This should be pretty obvious, but no.

Bless DS9

Some people are responding to this saying, “the ferengi are misognyistic capitalists though”, and i personally feel like theyre missing the point. There are absolutely valid criticisms of Ferengi society, but Ferengi culture and ferengis in general cannot be simplified down to a single set of traits and beliefs. There are ferengi with absolute faith in the system, but there are also reformists, rebels, and dissenters. Individual Ferengi are not inherently worse than individual humans or vulcans, they simply come from a different society which, yes, has oppressive systems, but which also has an ability to change. When Federation members view Ferengi as backwards and immoral, they deny that, and deny that their own cultures are also morally complex, and have histories that involve just as much misogyny and exploitation as ferengi culture. In order to judge, Federation members have to view their culture and beliefs as superior and valuable in a way that others are not, and assume that they come the moral high ground.

Quark doesn’t say that Sisko should like all Ferengi or all of Ferengi culture, he asks him to name a single Ferengi he likes. This points out the way that Sisko and others in starfleet have othered and stereotyped ferengi, and assumed they must all be the same. Its a patronising and arrogant viewpoint, one which offers no respect to ferengi on a cultural or individual level, and its something that deserves to be questioned.

some of y'all will see starfleet criticism with the show and dismiss it without even stopping to consider whether any of it is an accurate criticism of the starfleet humans or consider how it applies to our own biases in real life when that’s like….the whole point of the shows

Also remember that Nog had to beg Sisko for a chance to go to Starfleet Academy. Sure, he was kind of a juvenile delinquent when he was younger, but he'd also grown up under the Cardassian occupation, and his "street smarts" were a positive asset for the station when he got older.

Thinking about lil nas x. Thinking about how literally less than a month ago, I was seeing thinkpieces about potato heads having gender and how my generation is soooo sensitive. Thinking about how often I’ve been told “don’t like it don’t look” bc “whhaaaat the sandwiches are good” or “they were just JOKING” or “people have a right to serve whomever they want, go find another cake shop if it bothers you, oh my god.”

Thinking about how many times I’ve heard the words “music used to be ABOUT something.” Thinking about all those gotcha jokes where the set up is “if that was my son, why i would” and the punchline is that they’d love him, right, because it’s funny we are at risk of being traumatized. Thinking about this quote I read today about disrespect - that there’s plenty of people who think respect means “accepting as the absolute authority”. Thinking about religious trauma and the “battle for the soul of the nation”.

Thinking about how fighting them off shouldn’t be his job. Thinking about how preformative this pearl clutching is; how it’s just asinine rhetoric to cover blatant bigotry. Thinking about how I am scared to hold her hand sometimes. Thinking about bravery. Thinking about how the first pride was a riot. Thinking - holy shit. He just saved so many lives, and i hope he knows it.

It’s about taking the power away from a scary thing. Tell a queer kid they’re going to Hell now and they can shrug and say, “cool, I’ll be down there taking a turn on the stripper pole.”

The thing that blows my mind about this pearl-clutching backlash is that popular music about having a better time in Hell, away from all the conservative Christian bullshit isn’t even new. 

Irving Berlin released “Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil” in 1922, nearly 100 years ago, and it was a direct “fuck you” to white Conservative Christians having a tizzy fit about the immorality of Jazz, especially Henry Ford, who had written a whole goddamn treatise the year before saying: “Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation**. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.” OH NO NOT SLIDING NOTES! HEAVENS TO BETSY! OH MY WORD!

The lyrics to “Pack Up Your Sins” are as follows: 

Do you sense a theme?

Of course, Lil Nas X totally put his own spin on things to make it specifically about eschewing Christian morality in favour of embracing queer liberation, which is fucking fantastic! But it’s batshit insane to see the actual governor of South Dakota practically accusing Lil Nas X of personally ushering in the beginning of America’s moral decline, as if he’s some sort of gay pied pier leading all the good children away from God, when actually this is LITERALLY THE SAME BASIC THEME OF A NEARLY 100-YEAR-OLD SONG PENNED BY THE SAME COMPOSER WHO WROTE “WHITE CHRISTMAS,” “EASTER PARADE,” AND “GOD BLESS AMERICA.”

It’s just completely manufactured outrage about celebrations of otherness that have genuinely been around forever. These people don’t actually believe it’s going to threaten their way of life, because if these songs really had that kind of power, they wouldn’t still be here bitching about it after all this time. They just can’t stand to see anybody else enjoying being anything but them. 

Anyway, here’s a 1938 version of “Pack Up Your Sins” that features a 21-year-old Ella Fitzgerald on vocals absolutely crushing it: 

**This isn’t even true, btw. While there have long been influential Jewish jazz musicians, it’s a record of fact that Jazz was created by Black/Creole musicians in New Orleans, beginning with legendary artists like Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, and Joe “King” Oliver. Though some popular Jazz musicians were heavily influenced by Yiddish music and Jewish nigunim, most notably Cab Calloway in the 1930s, it’s likely that Ford was just employing age-old antisemitic, racist tropes about all-powerful, sinister Jews using Black people to do their evil bidding in an effort to engage in white genocide. Anyway, Henry Ford’s hatred of Jewish and Black people is well documented, and also the reason why kids in American PE classes have to do square dancing.

So someone pointed out to me recently that in a few years, maybe a few decades, the history of the us during covid is probably going to get twisted. The fact that we all had to make and wear cloth masks is going to be hailed as a symbol of how we “"came together as a nation”“” or whatever the fuck propaganda spin they try to put on it.

So I just want to say, for the record, the time of the corona virus pandemic was not a time when america came together.

This was a time when people hoarded toilet paper and sanitizing supplies either for themselves or to sell at absurd prices to the desperate people who didn’t get to the store soon enough during the shortages

This was a time when scared parents were sending their kids to finish school in the spring in plastic trash bags because they couldn’t think of any other way to possibly keep their families safe

This was a time when grocery store and retail and service workers were forced to keep working whether they wanted to risk their health or not because they couldn’t make rent otherwise and the people with enough privilege to have remote jobs tried to repay them with applause instead of fair wages

This was a time when nurses had the hold the hands of multiple dying people every day as their families watched their loved ones die over a video call because the hospital couldn’t risk having visitors

This was a time when city governments had to handle so many eviction hearings that they rented out convention centers and called in the national guard instead of doing a rent freeze to stop predatory landlords

This was a time when racism and police brutality were so unbearably horrible that people protested in the streets for months even though there was a god damn pandemic that our federal government wasn’t doing shit to stop and the cops were so mad that they were being asked to stop beating up black people that they were beating up everyone

This was a time when schools being forced to reopen in the fall or lose their federal funding had to draft templates for letters if a teacher or a staff person or a fucking child died from exposure to corona at school

This was a time when the president of the United states demanded that the cdc stop releasing data about all the people who were dying because of the warnings he ignored for months were making him look bad

This was a time when some state governments didn’t mandate masks and forced businesses to reopen because they didn’t want to pay unemployment to people trying to stay safe at home anymore

This was a time when Jeff Bezos was on track to be a fucking trillionare because everyone was ordering things on amazon instead of going to the store and the people he worked to death to get it didn’t see a single cent of it

This was a time when instead of providing homeless people with housing, we painted boxes on the ground to show homeless people how far away the had to be on the street to maintain social distancing

We did not come together to make cloth masks. Cloth masks represent nothing less than the absolute and utter failure of a nation’s government to inform and protect its citizens

This was not a time when we came together. This was a time when we survived, and not all of us made it.

This was a time when people casually talked about how many human lives the economy was worth without considering the evil that had just come out of their mouths.

This was a time when thousands of us died for profit and the ego of a cheating narcissists con man who scammed his way into the white house

This was a time that we survived. Most of us tried to do the right thing, stay home, limit trips to the store and socializing, wear a mask. And still, so many of us were lost. Thousands every day.

But that wasn’t a good enough reason for some people, for those among us who were too selfish to recognize the responsibilities we have toward one another as human beings.

This was not a time that we came together

This was a time that we survived

Not all of us made it

And those of us who did survive will never forget the evil we saw daily in our politicians and those around us

is it time for frank cho and milo manara to die or what

That’s basically a naked woman I’m YELLING

What a pervert. What the FUCK does he not know how clothes work? What the hypothetical fuck is she wearing then if we can see all that?

It’s like how bath towels in comics miraculously wrap completely around breasts. Or how even when injured and dead on the ground women in comics have to be twisted into “sexy” poses. Or how women in comics walk like they’re in high heels even barefoot. 

It’s the only way men know how to draw women, because to them female characters are only there to be sexy. They only think of “women” as exploitative costumes and camera angles, high heels and titillation. Sex objects to ogle, plot objects to further male heroes’ narratives and drama, not heroes to cheer for. 

I’m sorry, I was labouring under the impression that this was the crowd that thought women should wear what they want..?

And that applies to fictional women who are depicted by men how? You can’t apply agency in the plot to something metatextual when it comes to fictional characters. 

Come on, let’s not pretend this is a male exclusive thing.

We’re going to have this argument are we? Not to mention you’re deviating from the original point that attributing agency to fictional characters’ clothing is asinine. 

What you have here are images of power, and do you really believe these characters are designed with titillating heterosexual women and bisexual and homosexual men in mind? Because I don’t think you do.

This is why the Hawkeye Initiative exists. Take common female poses in comics, put a man in the role, and see how “empowering” and “strong” it actually looks: 

Also: 

He got the painting for fighting against ‘censorship.’ Note that they handed him a gross design of a female being objectified, because at the end of the day, that is all they really want, to be allowed to objectify women. They don’t care about censorship in general it is about their ability to sexualise and degrade women without consequence.

You can see her butthole for chrissakes

I think the best imagery I’ve seen to explain the difference between what men think male objectification is vs what women actually want to see is the Hugh Jackman magazine covers.

Hugh Jackman on a men’s magazine. He’s shirtless and buff and angry. He’s imposing and aggressive. This is a male power fantasy, it’s what men want to be and aspire to - intense masculinity.

Hugh Jackman on a women’s magazine.  He looks like a dad. He looks like he’s going to bake me a quiche and sit and watch Game of Thrones with me. He looks like he gives really good hugs.

Men think women want big hulking naked men in loin cloths which is why they always quote He-Man as male objectification - without realizing that He Man is naked and buff in a loin cloth because MEN WANT HIM TO BE. More women would be happy to see him in a pink apron cutting vegetables and singing off-key to 70s rock.

Men want objects. Women want PEOPLE.

This is the first time I have EVER seen this false equivalence articulated so well. Thank you.

There's also a certain amount of context that needs to go with the Milo Manara/Frank Cho thing, that helps explain why Cho is making such a big deal over a piece of art which is not only very porny, but obviously not that good overall, and yet allegedly from a "master artist and storyteller." Milo Manara is a European comics artist, of the sort that got published a lot in Metal Hurlant, aka Heavy Metal, which specialized in Eurocomix that usually included two things: 1) genuinely creative and inventive art and storytelling, way beyond what American comics were doing at the time (with the exception of anything by Jack Kirby and maybe a couple of other artists, at any given time), and 2) fully naked women, often thrown in seemingly at random, although sometimes they were the protagonists of the story, in which case the story almost always ended up being XXX-rated. Manara was very much into the latter, specializing in a certain type of thin, white, dead-eyed woman who would drop trou and go at it at the slightest excuse. Occasionally, he'd do something for American comics; he drew an X-Men comic which featured the women on the team, which is not a bad idea, only all the women are typical Manara women, with minor differences for the non-white characters. And then he did this cover for Spider-Woman:

This is the sort of comics drawing done by someone who a) has never taken an art anatomy course in their life, and b) did it primarily to have something to jerk off to. It was thoroughly mocked in the comics press, even by people who might otherwise defend Manara's right to draw as much porn as he pleases.

Frank Cho is an artist who really likes to draw titties. I mean, he's a competent enough artist, probably better than the average hack comics artist. He, at least, knows more about anatomy than, say, Rob Liefeld. But there's one specific part of the human anatomy that he's obsessed with, and I don't mean faces. In addition to that, he likes to play the censorship card, drawing bare breasts into a Marvel comic and then whining in the comics press about how they put something in front of his nipples. As you might expect from someone who plays that sort of game, he also has it in for "SJWs"; whenever he'd draw a cheesecake-y commission, he'd insert a headshot of Spider-Gwen yelling "Outrage!" because he'd previously been criticized for drawing Spider-Gwen in the same pose as Manara's cover above: [image redacted because she's a teenager. You can find it if you really want to]. And, for a while, that seemed to be almost all that Cho did, milking this ginned-up pseudo-controversy for all it was worth. Eventually, it started biting him on the ass; when he drew a cover for Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman that included a panty flash, and it got cropped out, he tried yelling "censorship" and Rucka got him kicked off the book.

So, basically, the image at the top is one sleazelord recognizing another, and defending it under the pretense that badly-drawn women with their clothes painted on was the very thing that the writers of the First Amendment were thinking of. Also, I'd like to push back against the assertion above that "Men want objects. Women want PEOPLE." The patriarchy wants both men and women objectified; men as objects of power and women as objects of lust. And, remember, the patriarchy hurts everyone; men who try to force their bodies into the impossible superhero ideal get hurt pretty badly in the process, physically and psychologically.

“Colorism isn’t real.”

Colorism? Wow because the term “racism” is so blase.

pilambdaod Colorism specifically refers to people of their own race valuing lighter skin over darker skin. For example in latina culture, valuing “good” straight hair over “pelo malo” or bad, curly hair.

Racism would imply we’re talking about at least two different races here; colorism specifically is about racist ideals within one race, people of one race policing others appearance within their own race. 

(since this is an indian book, presumably made by indian people for indian children to read, depicting a light skinned indian woman as more beautiful than a dark skinned one, it’s colorism.)

One of those is clearly Caucasian the other Indian.

Creating random new “isms” only makes legitimate grievances seem petty and stupid.

“One of those is clearly Caucasian”

All actresses/models born in India to parents who were also born in India (or Pakistan), in a narrow view of “race.” 

Ideas on “race” have been in slow development over the years, but colourism is a real thing (often with roots in imperialism, especially as Western ideas of beauty began to intrude upon countries). 

The 100 Years of Beauty: Philippines has a jarring jump where April Villanueva (who has light/medium-toned skin) gets her skin darkened for the 1910s-20s aesthetic, then becomes powder-white when US/European colonial interests make a stronger influence on Philippine society in the 1930s (more in the research video). 

Two more examples of skin tone variation between famous women in countries where colourism has become prevalent in celebrity culture (ie, it was a lot harder finding photos of a dark-skinned Korean actress than a light-skinned one): 

Variation in skin colour across a “race” is as real as variation in eye colour (”oh, you have brown eyes? I guess you’re not a real Caucasian”). 

Colourism also pervades a lot of modern beauty marketing. 

tl;dr colourism exists and isn’t some bogeyman made up by “”es jay double-ews,”” and if you’re the person bemoaning how it “delegitimizes racism” then it’s likely you actually don’t care about racism at all and are just trying to devalue the arguments with the classic “but so-and-so people have it worse! how could you be so self-centered and selfish??” 

Also “colorism” was coined by Alice Walker in 1982. This is not some new internet fad.

Colorism is 100% real. People don’t really have the audacity to say it to your face anymore when you’re older but from ages 6 to 13, I would constantly hear from relatives and others that I used to be so “white” and “beautiful” as a baby and it’s a shame my face darkened. Every desi girl I know has a similar experience.

In Asian countries, darker skinned people are thought to be ugly and poor.

One of my friends grew up in Bangladesh. Her parents had guests over, and she was setting the table and doing some chores. She’s eight years old and just trying to be helpful. The guests complimented her parents, saying they had a wonderful maid.

a maid. understandably she’s hurt, because they assumed due to the color of her skin that she wasn’t her parents’ daughter. she’s literally eight years old and doing something out of love, and that’s alienated from her—it was basically implied that she didn’t belong to the family.

she had the darkest skin out of her family (& she’s like a mid tan at most) so when she was little, they nicknamed her ’kali tara’, black star.

she teared up when telling us this story because you know in english, it doesn’t sound so bad. a black star. but in bangla, it implies a star that’s gone dark, been extinguished.

a black star doesn’t have any light.

I am Bengali, and while I’m not necessarily as pale as the Bollywood heroines my skin is still lighter than many of my friends/family etc. Despite that, I had a person doing my makeup before a dance recital tell me that if my complexion was cleaner (fairer) I would look like a goddess.

It was the closest a person ever came to calling me a goddess but I realised it wasn’t worth it.

In punjabi “gori chitti” [fair] is a compliment and kalu [blackie] is an insult

Colourism is very real and disgusting

Image of a text that reads: In conversation with some coworkers, today, one of them said that homeless people should have to work for their meals just like the rest of us.

I said, "Okay, I know a man who is homeless. He'd be happy to work. He's got a business degree. He would be happy to come clean your house, do your yard work, or help you with your filing, walk your dogs, babysit your kids, or just about any office job. What time tomorrow should he come see you?"

They all just looked at me.

I said, "Mind you, he's homeless, so he hasn't showered in a while and the only clothes he has are the ones on his back because he lost all his stuff last week when ge got picked up for vagrancy and they wouldn't let him go back for his bag. It would be a few weeks before what you are paying him is enough to get shelter and such."

And still they stared at me.

I finished, "See? It isn't that easy. He can't get a job because he's homeless with no access to hot water or clean clothes. He can't get access to shelter, hot water or clean clothes without a job. You want him to work for his meals? Give him a hand out of the vicious circle. Stop pretending that all he has to do is get a job."

Unhoused people are not intruders into our communities, they are our communities’ failure to take care of their own.

Plus, of course, lots of homeless people are already working.