themadflorist reblogged
haha-posts-blog-blog-blog-blog
Tubbs the snow-cat
“Captivity kills.”
This will be long. Bear with me.
I took a detour from my usual route home from work today, and drove under an overpass with a sign draped from it. The sign read, "Captivity kills."
As if it was that simple.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the over 200 California condors flying free in their natural habitat today- there are more in the wild than there are in zoos and sanctuaries. 22 birds were pulled from the wild in the early 1980s in a last ditch attempt to save the species. It worked. Captivity saved the California condor from extinction, thanks to the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Arizona Game and Fish Department, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Utah Department of Fish and Wildlife, the federal government of Mexico, the Yurok Tribe, the San Diego Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Oregon Zoo, the Santa Barbara Zoo, the Chapultepec Zoo, The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho, and the Ventana Wildlife Society. There are about 430 birds now, up from 22 about 35 years ago. That's incredible.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the Lord Howe Island stick insect, thought to be extinct for decades, and now making a comeback due to partnerships between the Melbourne Zoo, the Toronto Zoo, and the San Diego Zoo.
Captivity kills? Tell that to three orphaned polar bears, two of whom watched their mother be shot and killed in front of them, who are now healthy adults. Yes, of course they should be in the wild. I will be the first one to admit that. But they can't, because that opportunity was stolen from them, so we do the absolute best for them that we possibly can, and they have provided their keepers and our researchers with invaluable information about polar bear anatomy, hormones, behavior, mating, and movement patterns, that are being used to better understand what wild polar bears are up against and how better to help them.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the giant panda, which was pulled back from the brink by a collaborative effort between the Chinese government and US zoos back in the 1980s, when two pandas arrived on a 6 month loan from China to the San Diego Zoo. The wild panda population skyrocketed from just a few hundred to 1,850 today.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the Sumatran rhino. The last Sumatran rhino outside of Indonesia, Harapan, was born at the Cincinnati Zoo. He returned to Sumatra, to the Way Kambas National Park, to find a mate and propagate his species. His older brother, Andalas, has two calves to his name.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the Arabian oryx, which was extinct in the wild in the 1960s. The Phoenix Zoo, San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and the World Wildlife Fund brought the Arabian oryx back from the brink. Oryx born at the Safari Park were released back into the wild, on the Arabian peninsula, in the 1980s. There are over 1,000 wild oryx today, with a healthy genetic population in zoos and sanctuaries worldwide, and an active reintroduction program.
Captivity kills? Tell that to a Malayan tiger named Mek Degong, who was brought into a zoo in Malaysia after human encroachment on tiger habitat threatened tiger populations. Mek was sent to San Diego, where she had seven cubs, and is now enjoying her retirement as an 18 year old beauty in Fresno, where she had four more cubs. Tell it to the tigers in Malaysia and Sumatra whose lives are being saved by field researches from San Diego Zoo Global, Wildlife Conservation Society, Global Tiger Initiative, World Wildlife Fund, and several other incredible organizations, due to anti poaching efforts and efforts to mitigate human-tiger conflict by building tiger-proof livestock pens.
Captivity kills? Tell that to a giraffe calf named Mara, who lost her parents to poachers in Kenya. Mara was rescued by SDZG wildlife biologists and local farmers, who nursed her back to health after she had suffered an attack at the hands of some bad people, who cut off one of her ears. Mara made a full recovery in the giraffe orphanage funded by SDZG, and is now back in the wild- with a new family and another chance at life.
I am not saying that all zoos are good zoos, or that all sanctuaries are good sanctuaries. There are a lot of really pitiful excuses for roadside zoos and unaccredited sanctuaries out there, but in the 21st century, good, accredited facilities have dramatically shifted their focus from entertainment to education and conservation, or are in the process of doing so while learning as they go.
Captivity kills? Tell that to the people who dedicate their lives- their blood, sweat, and tears (literally) to combat the extinction crisis, knowing what they are up against, and who still return the next day to do it all over again- day after day, year after year, and who never give up hope that the world can change. My coworkers and I joke that if the world was perfect, we wouldn't have jobs. But the world is not perfect, and until it is, I'll keep fighting. If the world was perfect, zoos and sanctuaries wouldn't need to exist at all. Until the world is perfect, or at least kinder, I'll keep fighting. Why? Because those who are passionate enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that do.
themadflorist reblogged
themadflorist reblogged
themadflorist reblogged
themadflorist reblogged
“You are not broken. You do not need to be fixed.”
themadflorist reblogged
prairie hot dog riding goat burger
safewordcat
themadflorist reblogged
On April 26, 1986, a power surge caused an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine. A large quantity of radioactive material was released.
On May 2, 1986, the Soviet government established a “Zone of Alienation” or “Exclusion Zone” around Chernobyl – a thousand square miles of “radioactive wasteland.” All humans were evacuated. The town of Pripyat was completely abandoned.
But the animals didn’t leave. And a new study, published this month in Current Biology, suggests they are doing fine. “None of our three hypotheses postulating radiation damage to large mammal populations at Chernobyl were supported by the empirical evidence,” says Jim Beasley, one of the researchers.
In fact, some of the populations have grown. These photos (mostly taken by Valeriy Yurko) come from the Belarusian side of the Exclusion Zone, and area called the Polessye State Radioecological Reserve. Kingfisher, elk, boar, baby spotted eagles, wild ponies, moose, rabbits, and wolves all make their home in the park. In some ways, human presence is worse for wildlife than a nuclear disaster.
Image credits:
- 1986 Chernobyl - ZUFAROV/AFP/Getty Images
- Wildlife photos - Valeriy Yurko/Polessye State Radioecological Reserve
- Ponies in winter - SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
themadflorist reblogged
Wait… hold up. Every state is colored in. That can’t be right… right?
Unfortunately, the map is accurate. And it’s especially problematic for millennial women, who are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher than millennial men, but who are consistently earning less living and living in poverty more.
SLAMS THE REBLOG BUTTON
“But women earn more degrees” and still get paid less, so eat my whole ass
themadflorist reblogged
Where and when the fuck can black people feel safe?
Clearly not in public on the streets during the day (Eric Garner, 43 years old) Not while shopping for their newborn baby (John Crawford III, 22 years old) Not on their wedding day (Sean Bell, 23 years old) Not when they’re asking for help (Renisha McBride, 19 years old) Not when they’re walking home to their family (Trayvon Martin, 17 years old) Taking out the trash when mom’s watching (Darius Simmons, 13 years old) Playing in the park (Tamir Rice, 12 years old) Not even when knowing their rights (Sandra Bland, 28 years old) Not even when they’re sleeping at home (Aiyana Jones, 7 years old) Clearly not at school. (Spring Valley High School, University of Missouri) Not even in church (Charleston)
themadflorist reblogged
What should be done is to give back the human proportion to the abortion issue, and when we see it as such we may be able to have much more understanding for the woman who chooses it. Women who choose abortion are consistently labeled killers, and I personally have been compared to Hitler and called a great murderer.
A woman who feels she cannot go on, and with pain and despair she decides that she has to give up her child, is this woman a killer? Really really. But look, you cannot let these words hurt you. You have to be strong not to pay any attention because those who do that call you a Hitler and relate it to the Holocaust prove that they do not know what the Holocaust was.
Elie Wiesel, famous author and Holocaust survivor on abortion compared to the Holocaust in a 1991 interview :”I Am Against Fanatics”: A Dialogue Between Elie Wiesel and Merle Hoffman on Abortion, Love and the Holocaust
(via mimidigi)
themadflorist reblogged
This is how you ally, white feminism.
Oh yeah, and fuck you Allure Mag !
This White Feminist Loved Her Dreadlocks – Here’s Why She Cut Them Off
August 2, 2015 by Annah Anti-Palindrome
I felt the societal pressures of womanhood come on like a plague.
It seemed like one day I was building forts and catching lizards, and the next I was sucking in my gut, picking at my face, and navigating an inescapable shame about my body – a shame that I’ve now spent the last twenty years trying to shirk.
I remember being ten years old and grieving my girlhood – that short period of time when I was allowed to exist without a preoccupation of my physical appearance constantly looming in the front of my mind – a time when my self-esteem wasn’t rooted in whether or not I was pretty enough, skinny enough, busty enough, sexy enough.
Time passed and the more unattainable and oppressive heteronormative femininity felt, the more I grew to hate myself and everybody around me.
In my late teens, I finally gave up. I cobbled together an outfit with layers suitable for all types of weather and didn’t change out of it for an entire year.
I let my leg and armpit hair grow long, and I let the hair on my head spiral into a nest of cords, matts, and tangles (a hairdo I would later ignorantly and appropriatively refer to as dreadlocks).
I ran away from home – started hitchhiking all over the country, going to feminist music festivals, entrenching myself amidst the company of other (mostly white) grrrls who were shirking their feminine hygiene routines (shaving, bathing, hair combing, general beauty maintenance regimens of all types, really) in order to really “stick it to the patriarchy.” (It was a thing, okay?)
We idolized musicians like The Slits, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, Ani Difranco, L7, and Switchblade Symphony – all feminists who wrote songs about smashing mainstream beauty standards – all bands featuring white women who wore their hair in dreadlocks at some point or another during their musical careers.
What It Was Like Being A White Girl with Dreadlocks
In navigating through a predominantly white, feminist punk subculture, I never gave a second thought to whether wearing my hair in dreadlocks was offensive — at least to any one other than to The Patriarchy.
Having dreadlocks was part of what allowed me to stop obsessing over my appearance.
As long as I had them, the pressure – well for me as a cis gender white woman – to achieve mainstream, heteronormative beauty standards was off the table.
I suppose I felt empowered by this form of rebellious self-exclusion (the alternative being forced exclusion because I simply failed at womanhood).
While I did run into the occasional asshole on the street who called me a “filthy dyke,” my whiteness led people to read me as “quirky” and “alternative”.
I wasn’t followed around by security guards every time I went into a store. I wasn’t hassled by the cops for hanging out with my friends on street corners. I wasn’t hauled off to jail on the presumption that I was a gang member just because of my nonconventional appearance.
To further my point, being a white grrrl with dreadlocks, as well as someone who wore clothing scrappily held together by safety pins, dental fIoss and band patches, I was still considered employable and trustworthy.
Without any regard to personal qualifications, even with an incarceration record and no college education, I was often given responsibilities that put me in positions of authority over my co-workers of color.
Despite my rebellious appearance, I enjoyed a level of tolerance from authority figures and society at large that can only be attributed to my whiteness.
Everything changed when I stopped traveling, started investing in local activist projects, and began building a broader, more multiracial community.
For the first time, my peers had lots of questions and critiques about my choice to wear dreadlocks.
The responses other activists had to my hair ranged from mild irritation to downright anger.
People were constantly making comments under their breath when they passed me about “cultural appropriation” – I had no idea what that meant.
Some friends eventually suggested some readings and resources that would help me understand.
I read them and learned more about the history and symbolism of dreadlocks in the US in context to black folk’s resistance movements against white supremacy. I learned that black folks in the US with dreadlocks are not seen as “quirky” or “alternative,” but as “dangerous” and “militant”.
I learned to identify the ways that white colonist mentalities show up in our contemporary, everyday lives.
I realized that I was participating in the shitty reality that, for centuries, white people have felt entitled to taking pretty much anything their hearts desire – entire continents, human bodies, land resources, and, yes, whatever cultural trappings of the communities they colonized that were thought to be intriguing at the time.
The Harmful Messages I Was Sending to the World as a White Woman with Dreadlocks
It finally became clear to me that by wearing my hair in dreadlocks as a white person, the nonverbal statements I was making to folks of color were:
“Look! I can reject all of mainstream society’s expectations of me and still be treated with more respect than you!”
“Your legacies of cultural resistance are so irrelevant that they’ve become nothing more than a fashion accessory to help me evade the expectations of white womanhood!”
“I don’t care that my presence illicitness discomfort and sometimes communicates what is seen as blatant disrespect!”
“I don’t care that my hairstyle symbolizes the kind of white entitlement that has resulted in centuries worth of global, colonial violence.”
Etcetera.
I’m pretty embarrassed to say so… but even after this new stage of awareness I stiiiiillllll had a super hard time letting them go.
Some examples of my last stitch arguments were:
1. “Lots of cultures throughout the ages have worn dreadlocks! I’m part Scandinavian! My ancestors were Vikings!”
To which my friends responded:
Yes, it’s true that dreadlocks are worn in all different cultures around the world, but the context for which they are worn in the US is explicitly rooted in black folks’ (Rastafarians specifically) symbolic resistance to white supremacy.
When white people in the US wear dreadlocks, the power of this symbolic resistance is reduced to an “exotic” fashion trend wherein the oppressor is able to “play,” temporarily, an “exotic other” without acknowledging or experiencing any of the daily discriminations black folks have to face.
2. “We live in an intercultural society. Black women wear white hairstyles, so what’s up with the double standard?”
To which my friends responded:
Black women are told that in order to appear “respectable” in US society, they need to invest an obscene amount of time and energy into making themselves “look more white.”
Due to this fucked-up societal pressure – and due to the institutional power that white people have in determining mainstream beauty standards – it’s not the same.
3. “Nobody can control me! I do what I want!”
To which my friends responded:
…and you know what? You’re white, so it makes complete sense that you’d feel that way.
4. “By wearing dreadlocks, I’m giving up my white privilege to stand in solidarity with POC.”
To which my friends responded:
You are an oppression tourist – a white girl who always has an escape route back to the open arms of white supremacy once she is through rebelling. You can cut them off anytime.
To pretend otherwise or assume yourself a martyr is misguided and offensive.
5. “But there’s a difference between ‘appreciation’ and ‘appropriation’ isn’t there?”
My friends referred me to articles like these, saying:
I’m trying to think of examples of things I respect and how I show that respect. I’m actually struggling to think of a time when I respected something, and decided the best way to show that respect was by taking it. You know how I show respect?
I listen.
I listen hard, I listen deeply, and I listen constantly. I listen to stories, I listen to histories, I listen to learn, and I listen to hear when I’ve misstepped. I listen so I can become a more complete human being.
6. “But that’s not what I mean! What about the purpose they serve me?”
To which my friends responded:
Whether or not you mean to be disrespectful, the statements you are communicating are out of your control. Certain cultural symbols will always have semiotic weight – you wouldn’t wear a swastika pendant just because you thought it was pretty.
The Haircut
I finally cut them off – and when I did, I felt (literally and figuratively) a dozen pounds lighter.
Though I am still pretty “alternative” looking, I’ve learned to stand up against systems of oppression by doing the actual footwork in my daily life. I no longer naively expect my physical appearance (on its own) to do that work for me.
Cutting off my dreadlocks was a form of accountability – an acknowledgment of the ways in which I’ve benefited (and continue to benefit) from legacies of extreme, racialized violence.
Cutting off my dreadlocks didn’t make me an instantly “good white person” or even a trustworthy ally, but it sure as hell dismantled some of the barriers that stood in the way of cultivating deep, meaningful relationships based on mutual respect, trust and solidarity.
As feminists, we do need to continue working hard to dismantle society’s oppressive messages about femininity, but we also need to be thinking about the intersections of race, class, and gender, the ways some of us benefit from the system in which we live, and how we can empower and liberate ourselves without contributing to the oppression of someone else.
turningtricksbreakingdicks
This is one of the best things I’ve read on cultural appropriation from a white perspective
love-n-kindness
Fellow white people, take note.
themadflorist reblogged
i support girls anger. i support girls who yell. i support girls who get called bitches and cunts at parties because they’ll swear at guys who won’t leave them alone. i support girls who don’t believe in second chances and cut off people who hurt them. i support girls who say no the first time and flip you off if you ask them again. i support girls who will never allow themselves to be pushovers and constantly get shit for it. you’re fucking incredible.
themadflorist reblogged
“My parents thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t living my life the way they wanted. I didn’t fit the mold,” Bhatt explained. “They told me that I would eventually get an arranged marriage to a man.”
On September 10, the Indian queer resource group Nazariya helped Bhatt escape his family. The activists also provided Bhatt with legal counsel and shelter. That’s when things got complicated. Bhatt’s parents filed a complaint with the local police. Bhatt and supporters said his father, who he says is relatively wealthy and well-connected, used his power and influence to harass the activists.
GIFS VIA.
somethingaboutdelia
This needs more notes. Where’s all the white feminists when real shit goes down?
This is horrifying and repulsive to me.
Boosting the shit out of this. This is horrid.
themadflorist reblogged
What you say: Don't tell me what I can or can't say! I have freedom of speech!
What I hear: I don't understand the first amendment and have literally no other argument to defend my gross opinions.
themadflorist reblogged
warboytrash
bernie’s jewish so this is double as offensive
Bernie’s father lost his family in the concentration camps, too. The maker of the original is an ultimate scumbag.
blacknonbinarybabe
Wow
Also the Nazi’s were not socialists of any kind. They called themselves socialist in the same way North Korea calls itself democratic. They were a fascist party, so to compare ANY socialist to them would be wildly incorrect.
Basically original creator is antisemitic, incorrect, and knows nothing about political ideologies.