No, It’s Not “In Spite Of” Anything...

I absolutely hate when people say “so and so did x in spite of their disability” or “so and so overcame their disability and did x.” Because really, that’s not how it works. Disability and illness shapes a person and their experiences. Most of the time, it’s not “in spite of” our disabilities, it’s because of them.

Let’s look at some historical examples, shall we?

Take FDR. He was a wealthy, pompous playboy from a political dynasty who Gatsby-ed his way through the Roaring 20s without ever experiencing the real world. He didn’t become president in spite of having polio, he became president because of it. At a time of national hopelessness and desperation, his polio put him into the real world- into a place of understanding for the common man affected by The Depression. It humanized him and it got him 4 terms. It inspired the March of Dimes which consequently ended up funding Salk’s vaccine. That’s not “in spite of,” that’s because of.

Beethoven did not make music in spite of being deaf. In fact, he revolutionized Romantic music because of his distinct lack of high notes. His symphonies, especially his later works, are all much lower than what was common at the time, and it was all because he couldn’t hear high-pitched sounds.

Frida Kahlo did not blur the lines between Expressionism and Surrealism in spite of being disabled, she did it because she was bedridden and bored. Because she was in pain and she was shunned. In the same way her relationship with Diego Rivera inspired her works, so did being disabled. She didn’t overcome anything expect societies limitations.

The truth is, disability and illness are integral parts of our identities and they do shape our lives. The worlds we build and create are not made by overcoming the hindrance of disability, they are made because of the perspective it gives up. 

Erase the idea of in spite of. Erase the idea that our success comes from overcoming anything other than deep-seeded ableism. 

goingtopshelf:

I'd very much like to punch a feminist.

I’d never, ever hurt a lady but I’d be happy to punch a feminist. It’d bring me great joy.

I’m 6’2 and weigh 180lbs

ready when you are

Or if you’d like to have some more options….

I’m 6’4” 228 pounds and have 9 years of combined martial arts training and 3 years of being a Line Backer in football. Just in case you are looking for variety.

what about a lady and a feminist. warning, combatives certified soldier.

im tiny, i’m like 5′4 and 130 lbs but u can fight me too

Reblogging for the last one cuz that’s adorable

SO PROUD

The Fantastic 4 we deserve

OMG IVE ONLY SEEN THIS POST IN SCREEN SHOTS

We will all protect the small one.

so is Victory

LOVE TRIANGLE

Don’t forget Truth (Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind)

This must be why the Trump administration hates them all 

The Four Horsewomen of the Trumpocalypse.

I’ve never reblogged anything so quick

The Ultimate Squad, comin’ to wreck your shit and save the world

Rb for that art doe

The world @ America.

So many things kill me in this video:

1. How she just tappin random buttons in the beginning

2. How she says “I am confusion”

3. The way she says “explain”

I thought I’d lost this forever. I will forever reblog.

6 was scared of 7 because 7, 8 ,9 but why did 7 eat 9?

Because you’re supposed to eat 3 squared meals a day.

this is advanced

apparently ppl don’t know about waifu2x??? despite its… concerning name it’s literally the most convenient website i’ve ever come across as an artist

it allows you to resize artwork without it becoming pixellated. this is a MASSIVE help if you, for example, make lineart too small or something. it works best with things that 1. have no textures 2. have smooth lines 3. have cel shading, but it still works really damn well for things that don’t fit that profile

here’s an example:

normal size

2x in paint

2x in waifu2x

so like, there’s that. go wild

Original:

Photoshop scaled:

Waifu2x scaled:

It’s legit!! Tell your friends!

That’s quite impressive! It must have some great code under the hood.

@pommestar @estpintensifies

I thought this was funnier than I should have

Languages are made up can you believe that? it’s just a bunch of phonetic sounds gibberish none of it actually means anything. this post??? i could smash my hand on the keyboard and it could mean the same thing, it only doesn’t because we say so. Nothing is real 

jacques derrida is gonna rise from his grave and give you a high five bc you just described his theory to 75,000 teenagers and they listened

Wait. Wait. The entire fandom has been arguing for years over whether to take the 40 students in Harry’s year and multiply by seven to get Hogwarts’ total student population (280) or trust Rowling’s estimate of the total (1000) and assume there are more students than 40 in Harry’s year, even though we have the list of all of them.

But. You guys. Harry was born during a war against Voldemort, who had no qualms killing infants, and who certainly had no problem killing the young people Harry’s parents’ age.

Harry’s year is unusually small, and maybe Ginny’s is, too. Things picked up again after the war, when there wasn’t that threat of death hanging over everyone’s heads and taking young soldiers away from their spouses or significant others. And it really didn’t start until the Marauders were adults or almost adults, so… it shouldn’t have been an issue shortly beforehand, either.

Harry’s year is 40 students, instead of the expected hundred-odd, because of Voldemort. “The” girls’ dorm, and “the” boys’ dorm, are the only two dorms used by students in Harry’s year, but of course there are closed-off rooms, maybe ones that have disappeared because they don’t exist unless they’re needed. You know those empty, unused classrooms that I seem to recall hearing mention of once or twice? They’re for splitting classes that would be too big. But that’s not needed for Harry’s year. (It might be needed for the year below Ginny’s, though.)

Imagine being a teacher, or one of the older students. You’ve seen sortings before— ones with a hundred kids, or two hundred, and that’s what you’re used to.

Then you sit down, and watch the children file in for a Sorting. And there are forty of them. And you count back in your head and realize— these are the children conceived during the war. And this year is small. And so is the next. And the next.

But then the post-war baby boom starts using all the closed-up dorms and classrooms, and Hogwarts is back to normal.

Rowling has given more than one incompatible answer, and admits to being bad at numbers, which also explains it, but yours is more interesting.

“Truth or dare?” “Dare.” “Order me a pizza.”

I HAVE BEEN BLIND TO THE POSSIBILITIES

voting against gay marriage is like ordering a piece of cake at a restaurant and having a complete stranger be like “waiter, cancel that cake”

“waiter cancel that cake it’s ruining my cake and i don’t know how to explain it to my children”

“my dietbook said I can’t have cake so throw that guy’s cake away too.”

waiter I’m on a diet, and I’m trying to force my children to be on one. cancel that cake so my children don’t see it

Let’s be honest, we all had these ships that we shipped back then before we even knew what shipping was

omg

this is really fucking cool

sometimes I wanna reply “bitch me too” to my mutuals posts but I’ve never talked 2 them so they might not see it as friendly joking so i just dont

reblog if it’s okay to say “bitch me too” to you if you’re mutuals

god keep ur fucking kink meme shit out of ao3 tag y'all make this fandom even more insufferable than it already is and thats saying something!!! The kind of shit y'all post require a fucking trigger warning it doesnt belong in a safe space

Hello! I see there’s been some confusion! Allow me to clear something up: AO3 is not a safe space.

Let me repeat that. Archive Of Our Own is not a safe space, not in the way you mean it.

From the AO3 Terms of Service:

Why does the Archive have a goal of maximum inclusiveness?

What kind of content do you allow?

The ratings/warnings policy is really minimal. Why is this?

The stated desires/goals when AO3 was conceived and initially developed can be found here, on a livejournal post from @astolat (founder of VidCon, Yuletide, and AO3, and all around fannish legend). In short, the goal was “allowing ANYTHING – het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult.” 

And that, in fact, is precisely what AO3 hosts. You see, AO3 is a safe space for fanfiction. It’s a safe space for people to explore all kinds of fannish content without fear of banning, deletion, or legal reprisal. It was founded, designed, and developed to be a safe space for fandom and fannish works.

There also seems to be some confusion about the nature of safe spaces vs. trigger warnings. A fannish work that merits a trigger warning isn’t something that doesn’t belong in a safe space. The trigger warning is what MAKES something a safe space despite the presence of fannish works that merit warnings.

Something else to consider: there are many other things that include het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, and highly adult material, in addition to incest, pedophilia, infanticide, necrophilia, rape, bestiality, sadism and violence, adultery, and all manner of other things. 

So holding individual women (because that’s what fandom primarily is, women exploring their sexuality in a safe forum filled with other women doing the same) accountable for their fictional exploration of things that a) exist in real life in genuinely damaging forms, b) have significant impact on women themselves, thus leading in some part to the urge to explore those things safely, and c) have existing in movies, television, popular culture, the Bible, and in all of literature since literature began? Well, that’s just an extension of the same culture that polices women’s sexuality in the first place and drives them to find safe ways to explore it.

Ding ding ding we have a winner 🙌🏼

AO3 was pretty much meant to be a safe space …  FOR WRITERS.

FOR WRITERS TO POST PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS ADEQUATELY WARNED FOR AND MEETS THEIR CLEARLY POSTED CRITERIA.

IT LITERALLY EXISTS TO PROTECT FANWORKS FROM BEING CENSORED, THREATENED BY LAWYERS, OR TAKEN DOWN OR ALTERED AGAINST THE WRITER’S WILL. THIS APPLIES TO ALL WORKS THAT MEET ITS TOS. ALL OF THEM. YES, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THAT REALLY ICKY ONE.

THAT IS LITERALLY ITS PURPOSE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. IT WILL NOT CHANGE ITS PURPOSE AND SUDDENLY DECIDE SOME KINDS OF CENSORSHIP ARE OKAY NOW BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE YELL.

If this makes anyone personally uncomfortable, there’s a very easy way to avoid that. Just don’t use AO3. Problem solved.

I guess I should be glad that we have built a world where young fans can be so deeply ignorant of fannish history that they think that the mechanism of repression they’re invoking wasn’t originally built and used to silence them, and so easily could be again.  Their assumption is that they are entitled to have fandom feel comfortable and safe for them; it literally does not occur to them that within their own short lifespans you had to have separate and sometimes secret lists and archives for slash because “nobody wants to see that” and “it’s gross/against God’s will” and “what if the children see it!!!”  (I remember a man knitter having to quit the freaking knitlist because he took such shit just for referring to his partner as “DH/DB” (dear husband/boyfriend) the way the women knitters did theirs.)  And even within the slash community…the very first Smallville slash mailing list tried to ban strong language and graphic content.  A rebel splinter had to break off and found ClarkLex to publish all kinds of stories.  That was only in 2001!  

I know it’s a good thing that we’re now in a world where indignant young people have no idea how vulnerable they historically have been and still are in this particular context.  The time before: that was worse, for many people.  But it’s still very tiring to see.

Please, indignant young people, do start up your own archives where the Problematic Content is banned.  You’ll be setting each other on fire within the year over just where the line is to be drawn.  And advancing your actual cause not at all. 

By the way, there are plugins you can install that make filtering out unwanted content easy! If only the archive did a better job of letting users know these tools exist, they’d probably complain less.

From the FAQ [link]:

What tools can let me filter out triggering, offensive, or unwanted content?