just because you don’t look like somebody who you think is attractive doesn’t mean you aren’t attractive. flowers are pretty but so are christmas lights and they look nothing alike
I don’t think anyone could’ve said it in a better way
I reblog these things in the hope that someday I will grow to believe them.
The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.
Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa?
Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now?
On one hand, it’s a privilege to be able to choose to acknowledge these horrors or not–we’re going to acknowledge that privilege. On the other hand, I once attended a lecture by the explorerer-conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s daughter and son and they had a lot of opinions about what we could do to help the environment and the ocean and I talked about how in my country, we have to drink bottled water, because it’s a desert and there’s only salt water all around, but we’re contributing to pollution and all of these things…
And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.
We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.
As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.
I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.
… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.
Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.
This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.
No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.
Everyone going shopping on Black Friday, be aware of three things:
The retail workers are working 12 hours shifts. We are threatened with losing our jobs if we don’t show up unless we’re dying in the hospital. I had an assistant manager show up with fucking strep because he would’ve been fired otherwise. Yes, he did infect 7 and hospitalize 2 coworkers; who knows how many members of the public he infected.
The stores have, maybe, 5 of that special cheap thing you’re after. Corporate does this on purpose, and stores are not allowed to order enough. The prices aren’t even that much lower. They lie about how expensive something is to fool you into thinking you’re getting a discount. You aren’t.
Most of the workers you will come across will be new hires for the sole purpose of being bodies for about three months before they’re fired. They actually don’t know anything because they’ve been working there for maybe two weeks, and have had no real training. I was once hired at Staples a week before Black Friday and expected to know how to deal with phones, coupons, the online ordering site, and AS400 after five 6-hour shifts. This is the kind of person you will likely be dealing with at Black Friday.
Do me and my retail family a favor and don’t shop Black Friday. Any company that needs a sale day like Black Friday to get their sales out of the red doesn’t deserve to be in business.
This also goes for anyone that works shipment too. We’re suddenly expected to stay as late as they want you to even if they know you don’t have a car and rely on a ride to get you to and from work and know you can’t stay late. Shipment workers will suddenly start getting berated for not getting things done and it is by far the most stressful time to be a shipment worker for any store. Especially when they throw in new hires that don’t know how to process things and are expected to work at the same pace as the people that have worked there for a while.
Retail is shit around the holidays, especially Black Friday
ok fellow millenials, it’s time to kill black friday
the DA didn’t make the case for the crime and i went into the deliberation room knowing that. i also knew a half-dozen white orange county folks might not see it that way. the defendant was latino, there was a gang charge in addition to robbery.
sure enough, as we went around the table to give our first impressions, the white ladies used language around “gut instinct” and “he shouldn’t be hanging out with bad people” and the like. others were undecided because there was so much unreliable testimony.
they got to me and i flatly said “i have reasonable doubts.” i stated some of my reasoning and heads started to nod. the next 3 jurors to talk after me were hispanic. they stated that they understood why this might be confusing, and then gave some personal perspectives about growing up in disadvantage neighborhoods, how not everyone is a gangster just because they live there. one white lady said “well, you know, they should really move if that’s the case.”
the discussion opened up and it went right to gangs, right to how the defendant shouldn’t be hanging out with gang members. everyone had an opinion about how the defendant looked, or talked, or that he was drinking a 40 just before the robbery, or that he was related to a gang member. they went right to that.
but that’s not what we were supposed to decide on. we were there for a robbery as the primary charge. a robbery that i very clearly felt the state had not be able to pin on this guy.
so… being the loud mouth that i sometimes am… i interrupted and said “let’s all turn to page 14 in the jury instructions and go through what would make the charge ‘guilty’, line by line, and see where we all stand.”
sure enough, when we focused on the actual charge, and the facts actually required for someone to be found guilty, most in the room agreed it wasn’t there. well, except for two white ladies.
so i, also a white lady, helped to walk them through the list. when “gut instinct” or “it’s a bad neighborhood” came up, i kindly pointed out that those are not facts of the case. when i requested that they use the facts of the case to provide reasoning for their position, they both quietly agreed there weren’t any.
and that’s how, in about an hour, we came to a unanimous decision of ‘not guilty’.
i don’t have experience with the court system. and i don’t watch court room based tv dramas. so i was really a blank slate to all this.
i was taken aback at the very clear inherent bias that some jurors displayed, and all the while realizing they didn’t think of themselves as bias. but i was also taken aback by how focusing on the process, the rules, and the facts quickly squashed that line of reasoning.
this has buoyed me a bit, in light of the actions of the aclu over the muslim ban. but it also feels so fragile. so very fragile.
And this is exactly why I have never tried to get out of jury duty. We need clear thinking, intelligent people on juries. I get so frustrated with people I know who are always looking for a way out of serving.
somebody offer this hero a cape
Fellow whites. THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING.
Which means -get yourselfs on juries-. Don’t skip jury duty. Don’t skip don’t skip don’t try to sneak out of it, get on that jury, and make sure you are keeping all the other white people in line.
don’t measure a woman’s worth by her clothes – terre des femmes
THIS NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED SO FREAKING MUCH, TODAY PEOPLE CALLED ME WHORE BECAUSE I WAS WEARING A SKIRT AND WE ARE IN SUMMER, IT’S SO HOT IN THIS COUNTRY AND I HAVE TO USE PANTS SO GUYS DON’T GET ” DISTRACTED ”
respect girls
you may notice not one of those words is positive, not even neutral
its a game where there are no correct answers, just different ways to be told you are invalid, wrong, and should be ashamed. thats a shitty game to force people to play
Adaptable girls find socially acceptable ways to internalize or channel their discomfort and ire, sometimes at great personal cost. Passive aggressive behavior, anxiety, and depression are common effects. Sarcasm, apathy, and meanness have all been linked to suppressed rage. Troublesome behaviors, such as lying, skipping school, bullying other people, even being socially awkward are often signs that a teenager is dealing with anger that they are unable to name as anger.
Girls, taught to ignore their anger, become disassociated from themselves.
Anger is so successfully sublimated that girls lose the ability to understand what it feels and looks like. Is her heart racing? Does she feel flushed or shaky? Does she clench her jaws at night? Is she breaking out in hives? Does she cry for no reason? Laugh inappropriately during difficult conversations? Fly off the handle over something that seems inconsequential? You can see where I’m going here…those crazy girl hormones, right? Better to just think of it as a phase.
For too many women, however, the phase never ends. It’s lives spent never expressing anger at all and believing that they don’t have the right or ability to do so without great risk.
Ok this is important. I feel like this all the time.
I really feel this. A conversation I had with my psychologist last year after I described what I thought was an anxious reaction to somehow who’d hurt me calling me randomly after over a year. My heart was racing and I was shaking and felt hot all over and was on the verge of tears, and she said. “That sounds like anger. You’re allowed to be angry.” And I became very aware that I had not been able to identify my own anger and even know what it feels like up until that point.
People who say bi erasure doesn’t happen need to realize Freddie Mercury is known as the most famous homosexual man when he identified himself as bisexual. If that’s not bi erasure I don’t even know.
Also PoC erasure, most people don’t know he was 100% Indian
Specifically he was Parsi. Also raised Zeroastrian.
Steel Phoenix Studios 