The Boy and the Hooded Crow (1884) by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931, Finnish)

"Should parents read their daughter's texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?"

Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”

I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.

I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.

It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.

It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.

Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.

Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”

TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:

Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.

Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.

Its the whole gang!!

I started thinking about Adventure Time again and thought of some ideas for some princesses:

1) Circus Princess. She’s a clown but also a ringleader. Her castle is a circus tent. Some of her citizens could be balloon animals.

2) Shark Princess. Lot of teeth. Wears swim trunks. Her top may or may not be an old plastic bag

3) Wax Princess. Made of wax.

4) Sock Princess. A puppet on Ice King’s hand. Sounds like Ice King doing a bad falsetto voice. Ice King goes around convincing everyone that their relationship is getting pretty serious, that they’re really compatible. Absolutely no one believes him, but everyone goes along with it. Eventually Jake gets frustrated and whacks Sock Princess off Ice King’s hand, only to reveal that she has been a real princess the whole time. Everyone feels bad about it. (maybe: Ice King is also surprised. He thought he WAS trying to fool everyone)

5) Pottery Princess. She is made of ceramic and is very shiny. Would make twinkly ceramic sounds when she moves and walks. She can create new pottery people on a wheel. One citizen could be a lumpy finger pot, just a silly little guy.

6) Cowboy Princess and Deputy Cactus. They are girlfriends. Live in the Cowboy Kingdom. Lot of cowboys and cactus people there. I just realized I didn’t finish writing “mohawk” in my drawing

7) Birthday Princess. She is the go-to gal for throwing the ultimate birthday parties. Her hair could be made of streamers? It’s her birthday every day. Finn and Jake bring her gifts every time they visit (this stresses Jake out). Finn and Jake could help her with something, and she gives them a gift as thanks. It’s the same gift Jake got her and she just regifted it.

George Bush Jr. was the new primary school teacher.

Oh, what a nice photo of him reading to the children

He was reading a book to a class of children when 911 happened

So, yeah, not good

WHAT

you can see the same little chalkboard sign behind him in this iconic photo

Sometimes you gotta stop worrying about being the smartest and funniest person in the room and just enjoy being in a room with smart and funny people

I'm very tired of this "queer college students should stop supporting Palestine, they'd kill you there!" I watched a hijabi ask a trans man, "but what name do you want to go by?" A butch giving a woman their hoodie so that she could keep her hair covered after the cops took her scarf. Muslim girls making sure the lesbian couple got through the system together. Religious men making sure purple haired protestors got out safe. I don't want to hear it. Solidarity forever, free Palestine.

you've gotta have friends who are older than you, not because you're a dumb kid, but because you'll be terrified of growing up otherwise

being the oldest person you allow yourself to know will eat holes in your brain and you'll start saying weird stuff

Get a hobby that is intergenerational.  The friendships with people much older and much younger than you will mean that wisdom and ideas are shared among many and not isolated among the few.  

Do you ever just think about how fuckin hilariously complex of a character Heinz Doofenshmirtz is?? Like, imagine trying to explain it to someone who’s never seen a bit of the show–he’s a human who’s legally an ocelot and is also a potential furry, he’s not a pharmacist despite common belief, he wants to take over the tri-state area thanks to a suggestion from the protagonists’ mother whom he went on a date with in the 1980s, his nemesis is also his best friend (and oh yeah did we mention he’s a platypus and the protagonists’ pet) and although they fight like hell, they’d also die to protect each other from real harm, and they essentially raise his daughter and robot son together. He believes himself to be “evil” because of his desire to get revenge on the world for abusing the heck out of him all of his life, but he gives up that lifestyle in the end and simultaneously becomes a crime-fighting agent/high school science teacher/inventor of time travel. What a legend.

He’s amazing and I love him so much. 

-Despite being divorced, he’s very active in his daughter’s life and his relationship with Charlene is amicable. 

-Went from having issues keeping a relationship to actively working to keep it, and gives solid advice about communicating your needs. 

-The universe liked to use him as a punching bag. Now he’s punching holes through space-time. 

- Double amputee, but still very good with his hands - hands he probably created himself, potentially revolutionizing prosthetic technology to the point that a bug can seamlessly join human society

- founder of LOVEMUFFIN, which has become THE society for evil scientists in the Tri-State Area and grew to the same level of prestige as an actual government-funded secret agency in the span of like a few weeks

- multilingual, even fluent to semi-fluent in some inhuman languages

- unintentionally created the first truly self-aware, emotionally intelligent AI

- insanely intelligent, mostly self-taught, extremely multitalented in a variety of disciplines, too many to list

- struggles with a multitude of mental, physical, and emotional disabilities, yet is still INSANELY successful at whatever he does to the point of becoming a historical figure

- Furry Scientist is Inspiration to us all

phineas and ferb heritage post

We celebrate David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Prince for their gender-nonconforming amazingness as we should, but let us not forget

Annie Lennox

Grace Jones

Sinead O‘Connor

Dolores O‘Riordan

Patti Smith

Tracy Chapman

Please add if you like, i do not own the photos

Big Mama Thornton (photo credit unknown)

Joan Jett (photo credited to Brad Elterman)

Pauline Black (photo credited to Ebet Roberts)

Meshell Ndegeocello (photo credited to Raymond Boyd)

Tanita Tikaram (photo credited to Bernard Weil)

Gladys Bentley (early 1930s, photo credited to Sterling Paige)

Jackie Shane (1967, photo credited to Jeff Goode)

Nina Hagen (1983)

Phranc (1985, photo credited to Frank Gargani)

k.d. lang (1993, photo credited to Richard Young)

good to known there is still magic in the world somewhere

You know what I needed today? This.

whenever i see people draw garfield as a catgirl they always make him feminine and young. you dont understand him like i do. anyways theyre both transbians to me

[image description: a drawing of garfield and arlene from the garfield comics depicted as catgirls. garfield is depicted as a fat, light-skinned, hairy woman with short orange mullet hair, freckles, a white tank top, orange shorts, and orange sneakers, and arlene is depicted as a tall, dark-skinned woman with short curly pink hair, red lipstick, a red dress, sheer tights, and pink pumps. arlene is sitting on a countertop and looking down at garfield, who is sitting in a chair with his legs spread, picking at his teeth and smiling. the drawing is made to look as though it were a real garfield comic panel. end id]

Shrek 2 + favorite pop culture references

Why does this work for this movie where it fails with most others?

Because Shrek is, at its core, a parody.

It isn’t a silly film making pop-culture references. It’s a *parody* film making a *parody* of pop-culture.

Since most of the references are pretty solidly “classic” or at the very least extremely memorable moments in cinema, over multiple decades of time, they resonate really well even with modern audiences.

It also (crucially, at least in my opinion) doesn’t kill the scene if you don’t know what’s being referenced. Puss reaching back for his hat before the door closes is still funny if you haven’t seen Indie do it. Pinocchio using his strings to lower himself carefully downwards that way is genuinely clever regardless of the Mission Impossible parody. The fact that the furniture is dancing with Fairy Godmother serves to further highlight her character and role whether or not you connect it to Beauty and the Beast. The references serve to enhance the scenes they’re in when you recognize, not to leave you behind if you don’t.