Where’s the video of the La La Land producer’s speeches? Don’t try to spare these white people the embarrassment. I wanna see what they had to say about “diversity” before those trophies were rightfully taken out of their hands and given to Black folks!
Oh stop. Those producers handled a major screwup with a lot of grace. And they were advocating for diverse, inclusive films to continue being made in general.
Child, please. Don’t do this. They gave a passing mention to diversity and lord knows they were talking about musicals versus typical films. You know who handled that situation with a lot of grace? The Moonlight crew who had their moment initially snatched from them. They’ll never get the moment of hearing their film officially called for Best Picture and then were made to walk up to the stage as though it was a concession prize.
I’m not here for this unnecessary empathy for white folks who got screen time they didn’t deserve nor earn. Who got to speak hollow words of acceptance for something that didn’t belong to them. They got more than they deserved. They’ll be alright.
This. Also, I’m not here for the media turning Moonlight’s rightful win into a story about how “gracious” the crew of La La Land was. And just so everyone knows how monumental Moonlight is:
1 It brought us the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar (Mahershala Ali)
2. It is the second film with a black cast to win Best Picture
3. It is the first LGBT film to win Best picture.
…and then we have the cast of La La Land who couldn’t even manage sing their own songs at the Oscars tonight.
La La Land got enough unearned screen time as far as I’m concerned.
Again, how are they going to say diversity and have that white movie with a white cast producers writers and everything?
Don’t apologize, anon! I’m always here to answer questions, even if they’ve also been answered before.
In regard to radfems, it’s all about men. Or, rather, their blind hatred of men and anything they ‘touch.’ For example, you will see even radfems who don’t espouse TWERFy sentiments instead redirect them from trans women to trans men and some nonbinary people, on the ‘reasoning’ that ‘they’re men, that means they’re inherently misogynistic and I don’t have to give a single shit about them. What do you fucking mean ‘that’s not how intersectionality and intersectional oppression is supposed to work?’’
The way this affects bi women and all m-spec women, for that matter, is that the closer we seem to be to men, the ‘worse’ we are in the eyes of radfems. Lately, some of them and the young girls to whom they’re spreading their ideas in this place, have made a big show about how much they supposedly love sapphic women or WLW, but make no mistake – thatlove and that acceptance are purely conditional. And the condition, as far as radfems are concerned, is that we ‘prioritize women’ (translation: that we have relationships predominantly, if not always, with women).
Lots of assertions that bi “women loving women”, and trans lesbians, and lesbian asexuals, are precious cinnamon rolls who must be protected at all costs. That all “women loving women” are the best and must be protected at all costs. And at the same time, this constant insidious theme that the *reason* to protect them at all costs is because they are “women loving women”. That you are worthy of love and protection and adulation to the precise extent that you act and look like them – and no further.
And the nearer you get to guys, the faster they throw you out. I don’t know why it’s called radical feminism in the first place; it’s not about women as a group at all. Women who have anything to do with men get reviled to such an extent that even asexual women are labeled as “basically het”. (source)
I made a very bleak joke about this to a friend, a couple of months ago and it went something like this: I’m at an art event and I meet a fellow I like and who seems interested in me as well. He asks me if I want to go out sometime and instead of answering, I pull out a giant-ass Excel spreadsheet and say ‘wait, wait, I have to see exactly what ratio I’m at if I date you. Because, you see, there’s a whole bunch of people ready to start shouting ‘traitor’ and ‘bihet’ and ‘you’re not oppressed for sucking cock!’ at me unless I carefully monitor the number of different-gender people and particularly of cis men I choose to date.’ Sounds completely and utterly fucked-up? That’s how you end up feeling as an m-spec woman, due to the fact that radfem ideas permeate far too many LGBTQIAP+ communities. You end up feeling guilty for who you’re fucking attracted to, instead of it being a natural, normal thing that’s, frankly, no one else’s business but yours and your partner’s.
This is what I mean when I keep snapping that conditional acceptance (no matter the reason or situation) is complete fucking bollocks and should’ve died in a ditch a long time ago.
‘It’s as if I walked into a far-right community’is entirely correct. Radfems will deny this until the cows come home, but their politics are inherently reactionary, no matter how you slice it. This is one of the reasons why they’ve been natural allies to conservatives over anti-trans legislation and why, when you read one of their anti-kink screeds, for example, you sometimes struggle to figure out if the thing was written by a radfem or a religious fundamentalist (the funniest thing I ever saw on here was a bunch of anti-kink radfems liking and reblogging a post written by an ultra-conservative Catholic!) Their attitudes toward m-spec women are no less reactionary and exclusionary.
Listen to me, anon. I know it’s often hard to see, particularly in this place, but there are people who constantly push back against radfem ideas in LGBTQIAP+ spaces , who fight against bigotry toward m-spec people or a-spec people (the two often go hand-in-hand – watch a radfem aphobe say that she loooooves m-spec women… only two posts later to deny the existence of biphobia!) and who work to make sure that individuals don’t end up in a situation where they’re shat on by Straight society and then they’re also shat on by what is supposed to be their community. You’ve always got people who love and support you without placing any conditions on their affection and support, remember that.
This. I’ve seen radfems openly mocking posts about letting bi girls date men because they mistakenly believe that het society gives us a pass and thus they don’t even need to listen to what is being said. They believe we are protected when we are with men and any posts about us in that manner are superfluous.
I’ve been told, by these women that I “carry the taint of men” that they don’t trust women who are “sexually available” to men that I’m a “barely gay” or an “attention seeking straight” and the absolute refusal of some people to engage with what this lateral aggression can do is damaging.
You’re not edgy if you reply to a post about bisexuals in different gender relationships needing to be accepted with “ok, but who doesn’t?” and tagging it with “lol” and “people need a positivity post for anything these days”. All you are doing is ignoring the issues faced by bisexuals when we try to tell you what they are.
The broken notion that “society loves you so you don’t need love here” is SO giving damaging, because, NO… Society does NOT love us. We shouldn’t have to say that when rates of domestic and sexual violence against bisexuals are SO damn high. We don’t have passing privilege, we are viewed as sexual objects for abuse and objectification.
You don’t get to pretend you’re not a biphobe if you ONLY care about a part of our identity, if you ONLY care about us when we are with women.
If you don’t care about the whole then you don’t care at all.
Another mosque was vandalized in Montreal… After the incredible support of the Muslim community for the Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, I hope that the Jewish community will also continue reaching out in support of our Muslim neighbours. Please share widely and support if you can!
As a transgender man who is going to be having a baby, I am so glad that by technicality my child will be able to fulfil the prophecy and defeat Macbeth.
To be on the safe side, get a C-section? Macbeth really needs defeating.
Ironically I do have to have a C-section due to a hip problem I have. So it’s double accurate.
I like how this post implies that Macbeth is still out there, most likely terrorizing people, and no one has been able to stop him
So i work as your friendly underpaid barista and currently we’re having problems with one of our regulars hitting on our women staff members. The first woman he hit one, he wrote a note to her….as in elementary school note passing. Now of course, she’s at work and the model in f&b and retail is that you do everything in your power not to piss off the guest.
So in hopes of not causing a scene, she kindly wrote on the note that she appreciate the interest but she’s a lesbian. Now, 1) she shouldn’t have to out herself to a complete stranger all to avoid a bad yelp review. 2) She shouldn’t be forced into a situation where she has to entertain a guests unwanted attentions to avoid at the least, a negative review on yelp.
So once she passes this dude the note, he then starts jokingly exclaiming “I always fall for lesbians” in the middle of our cozy cafe, effectively outing her to anyone within earshot. Now my co-worker isn’t closeted, she’s out and proud etc, etc. However, that doesn’t give someone else the right to disclose her sexuality without her permission, and especially not after he effectively coerced her into outing herself in order to avoid his come-ons.
Another one of our regular guests, hits on one of our baristas on a regular basis. No matter how much she casually brings up her boyfriend. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to literally stand in front of her so he can’t force eye-contact with her (Naturally we do this kind of thing in a low-key manner so that we don’t actively piss off guest and thus put our jobs at risk).
I’ve had to actively shut down people on behalf of my women co-workers (Nah dude, she’s seeing someone. She’s not interested in that sort of thing. Dude, chill out.) because they simply can’t understand the fact that they are at their jobs and simply just want to get their jobs done and go home. Stop taking advantage of the unequal power dynamics to force her to engage you. She’s seem nice? Of course she is, her job revolves around being nice. She seemed into you? No, I can promise she’s not, she’s doing her job and told me five minutes ago how you were clearly staring down her chest.
“But how am I supposed to let her no I’m interested in her?” you might say. My answer, that’s not my fucking concern. There are plenty of opportunities to meet people in this world that don’t revolve around you forcing them into an uncomfortable position while they’re literally trying to earn a living. Not every person your interested in obligated to entertain that interest.
Simply put, stop being goddam creepers and let people do their goddamn jobs.
Fuck off. Some of us have a hard enough time talking to people without shitheads like you guilting us over it.
No one’s guilting you over anything. The point of this post is for you to stop doing it, not to do it and feel guilty.
If you feel awkward hitting on someone who’s not in a position where she can safely be honest with you or leave if you make her uncomfortable, that’s good. Listen to that awkward feeling. It’s telling you that you’re transgressing a boundary.
Now, if you feel like you’re always awkward and always crossing a boundary, then posts like this should be a gold mine. It’s telling you in clear terms where boundaries actually exist and why.
Story time:
There was this dude I knew through a monthly infosec meeting. He knew me and my fiancee and my friends through this meeting and he started coming to the coffee shop while I was working. He took a shine to one of my coworkers. He started asking me when she would be on shift and when I wouldn’t tell him he started showing up every night just in case. So she took on afternoon shifts and he started showing up in the afternoons. So she took morning shifts and he started showing up in the morning. So she started taking random shifts and he started showing up all day, from four thirty am when we opened until close at one am.
The thing is, while this is creepy in hindsight he wasn’t doing anything overtly creepy. The shop billed itself as “Smalltown’s Living Room” and there were a few regulars who hung out all day. And this guy bought endless iced teas and ate all his meals off our menu and bought ice cream for regulars and tipped extravagantly. He must have been spending close to a hundred dollars a day at the shop and never did anything beyond placing his order, chatting for a minute, and sitting in a chair where he could always watch the counter. Sometimes he’d talk to me after I locked up and asked if she liked him and ask me how he could get him to like her and no amount of “dude, it’s not going to happen, she’s not interested” could convince him. “But she’s so nice to me,” he’d say, “she smiles when she sees me and listens when I talk to her. No other girls do that for me.”
The owner felt a little hogtied by the whole thing – the guy hadn’t DONE anything, except spend more money than my coworkers and I made on a shift each day to have the opportunity to see her. At least five hundred a week on product. Almost the payroll of a full-time employee every week. And there was always a ten or a twenty from him in the tip jar at the end of every shift – five or ten dollars that represented about an extra hour’s worth of labor to everyone working there. So my co-worker and I felt bad too – he wasn’t really being THAT creepy, was it worth it to deprive our other co-workers of this extra income? (Spoilers: yes)
After a couple months of this (and yes, it was terrible that it went on for that long) my coworker got a better-paying, stalker-free job at her university and nobody was happier for her than me. It was my stupid bullshit that had infected her life and if I hadn’t told this acquaintance to swing by the coffee shop sometime she wouldn’t have had to deal with being scared and tense and having to hold a brittle smile every day at work just so that five or ten would reliably show up, so that someone’s hours wouldn’t get cut because of the dip in sales.
And when she left this guy was crushed. Didn’t show up for a month. Then he started coming in again. Started talking to me about how heartbroken he was, hanging out for my entire shift and thanking me for being such a good listener and marveling over the fact that my fiancee, his friend didn’t appreciate me the way I deserved. He’d follow me out on my lunch break and sit at my table. Eventually I went to the Smalltown Police Department and asked what I would need for a restraining order.
“Well, have you told him in clear words that he is not to speak to you and to leave you alone?”
“I can’t, he’s a customer and he only speaks to me in front of other customers.”
“Well, unless you tell him to cut off contact and he violates that there’s nothing we can do.”
And that was the real nastiness of this trick – always being in front of other customers. When you’re on register you can’t tell a customer never to speak to you again then casually move on to the next person in line. When you’re getting a muffin out of the pastry case you can’t tell a customer “go away and never come back” in front of some soccer mom who believes the customer is always right. You can drown someone out with a blender or an espresso machine, but only temporarily. There was a cubbyhole where we put our purses under the register – eventually it got to the point that if I saw him through the windows I’d let my coworker know then crawl into it to hide. Sometimes I’d spend half a shift doing dishes and making sandwiches in the back where he couldn’t follow me. At least we’d never run out of clean mugs, right?
It was too much. I told my fiancee and a couple other infosec friends what he was doing. He’d stopped coming to the meetings months before over a tiff with another dude so they weren’t seeing him. The had jobs to go to, they didn’t have the time to sit at a coffee shop with me all day. So they took a day off work in the middle of the week and when this guy followed me outside on my lunchbreak I texted them that he was there with me. I didn’t respond to anything that he said during that lunch, I only said “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, please leave me alone.” I said it quietly, but I said it in clear words, per what the police department had told me. He continued to talk while I continued to look at my book and try to eat my food when my fiancee and his friend showed up and joined us at the table. My fiancee (who is, by the way, over six and a half feet tall and built like a fridge) sat down next to him, our other friend sat down on the other side. They both very casually asked what he’d been up to recently. He didn’t say anything, just bit his lip, glared at me, and stormed off. He never came back to the coffee shop.
He DID email a friend of mine to rage about how I’d broken his heart and lied to him and misled him and sent mixed signals – how it was so nasty and two-faced to be smiling and nice one minute and turn on him the next, how he thought we had a connection, and why would I spend so much time listening to him and laughing at his jokes and smiling at him otherwise?
For two months nothing happened, then he showed up at the infosec meeting and as my fiancee and I were getting into the car to leave he charged at us and started trying to hit my (once again, goddamned enormous) fiancee and trying to push past him to come at me. This guy was about five ten and not terribly strong, and while we were scared we didn’t want to fucking KILL him, so my fiancee just sort of knocked him down instead of having a serious fight. The guy got into his car, rushed around bunch of us in the parking lot, which was genuinely terrifying because we thought he might try to run someone over, then sped away into the night. We called the cops to file a report of assault. The cops didn’t want to talk to me, said I wasn’t involved in the altercation. They took a statement from my fiancee and two other guys who had been in the parking lot, then took down my number and a note that I claimed he’d been “close” to me. I told them he’d been harassing me but they just said that it wasn’t harassment if he just showed up at my job and didn’t actually DO anything.
Well, it turns out that while we were making our report this guy had driven to our friend’s house and rammed the house repeatedly with his Honda. He completely caved in the garage and tried to charge the living room but was stopped by a reinforced concrete wall. When the cops showed up there he was on the lawn raging about how we were all against him and trying to control him.
I missed all my classes the next day because I went to my college campus police department and said I needed a restraining order. I explained what had happened and their first question was how long I had dated the guy. Why did he think we were dating if I hadn’t been flirting with him? Had I led him on or tried to make it seem like I was interested in him? They escorted me to the women’s violence prevention center on campus and I spent approximately six hours filling out paperwork before the director of the center drove me to the county courthouse and made sure I was granted a temporary restraining order that day. It was made more difficult because I only knew this guy’s first name. At every step I had to reach out to my infosec friends or my fiancee to ask for his address, to check the spelling of his name, to confirm the make and model of his vehicle. This guy had chased my coworker out of a job, been showing up on every one of my shifts for months, and I didn’t know anything about him because to me he was just a customer who was an annoyance that had become a threat. But in his head I was the nice girl he’d had a meet-cute with at a fucking hacker hangout who blossomed into a romance in the goddamned coffee-shop AU he was scripting in his imagination, who spurned this rich, considerate, shy boy in favor of her lunk of a boyfriend who wasn’t good enough for her. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to explain a fifteen-year-old gray-hat hacker meetup to a judge in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re selling heroin? Calling it a professional infosec networking group didn’t work well enough to include it on the list of places on my restraining order. He couldn’t come to my coffee shop, my home, or my school but was free to return to the meeting where he’d attacked us that was full of my friends who DIDN’T have restraining orders so long as he left when I showed up.
I hate coffee-shop AUs, in case that isn’t clear. It perpetuates this idea that the person behind the counter is your ONE if only you’re persistent and sweet and generous and bashful enough to keep forcing them to endure your presence in their place of employment.
Look, it sounds fucking shitty to say it but most customer service jobs can be accomplished by machines. Automated phone trees can take the place of receptionists, you can get a latte as good as anything you’d get from a Starbucks out of a machine, cashiers can be replaced by self-checkout. Even bartenders can be replaced by some tubes and buttons if you have enough money to burn. The reason customer service still exists is because it is emotional labor that the customer is paying for. An automated phone tree can’t reassure you that it’ll pass your message along just as soon as possible and that we’ll make sure the tech gets back to you. An automated espresso machine won’t smile at you and ask if you’re having a good day. A self-checkout doesn’t make small talk about how great that ice-cream is or how nice the day is outside. A drink machine may be able to listen to your problems but it won’t say “I feel you,” and tell a funny story to make you feel better. We live in the fucking future, almost everything you could want can be accomplished with an machine an a cellphone. If you’re interacting with a human it’s because you want to interact with a human and you want that human to be nice to you. You are paying for their kindness, for their smiles when their feet hurt and their questions about your day when they haven’t had lunch yet.
Flirting with customer service workers at work, asking them out when they’re on the clock and paid to make you happy, telling them you think they’re attractive and expecting a gushing response – that’s breaking the rules. That’s a lose-lose situation that you’ve set them up for. If they continue to do their job and be nice to you they’re “leading you on” and if they react negatively and ask you to leave or to not speak to them that way it’s “bad customer service.”
A good rule of thumb if you’re thinking about asking someone out or flirting with them is to ask yourself this question: “if do this thing and it makes them uncomfortable can they leave this place without it impacting their livelihood?”
If the answer is “no” and you do it anyway you’re a jackass. That person is trapped. You have cornered them. You have put your desire to flirt with them over their ability to earn a living.
“Oh good, I’ll do it now, when they can’t get away” is not an effective dating strategy. It’s abusive, it’s creepy, and nobody is well-paid enough to put up with unwanted sexual or romantic advances while they’re trying to do their job.
Don’t pull this shit.
^^^^^^^that was intense
My god what a maddening story. And of course, there will be many who read it and dismiss it as one in a million or the actions if a particular weirdo. It’s not.
When I worked on the shop floor of Waterstones it was at a branch that opened till 10. The evenings were when the creeps turned up. I am not exaggerating when I say not a single female member of staff at that place was without at least one ‘customer’ (mostly they weren’t paying customers, more people making use of our seats and charging their phones) developing a fixation on them. One guy had transferred his stalking of our (gay) assistant manager from her previous branch. One friend used to gave her boyfriend meet her when she finished to avoid the guy who would like to walk ‘with’ her to the station. I’ve previously mentioned my own experience, which was a less extreme version of the above story. No violent response or campaign of real stalking, just lots of aggressive messages and slagging me off to my friends.
(If you think you shrug this stuff off, I was more affected by my experience than I realised till later. I feel angry that a guy’s sense of entitlement to my time, good will and then to take out his hurt feelings on me, resulted in a shaken confidence that had noticeably negative consequences within my life afterward. How dare someone think they get to do that?)
I’m describing the experiences of about ten women (some of them as young as 19) in about a two year period. Every single one got at least one borderline stalker, some a honest-to-goodness stalker.
I should mention the male staff didn’t get off entirely Scott free, our handsomest make colleagues tended to get taken for lunch by an older, creepy local author. But the fact that they WENT says a lot about the difference in conditioned fear responses.
This happens to women in retail all the time.
And the men who whine we are changing the rules… have you considered you are meant to be an adult which means you don’t GET a set of rules? You’re meant to navigate for yourself how to deal well with other people. And you do that by listening when they say they gave a problem and not whinging it’s haaarrrddd not to be creepy.
Just a reminder that the first NASA astronauts were supposed to be women because generally they are smaller, lighter (less weight in the cockpit means less fuel required) and eat less than men and so would be easier to accommodate in space.
Both men and women trained (and many of the female finalists had higher scores than the men), but they were completely excluded from the final selection because of their gender.
13 women underwent final training, all were accomplished pilots with at least 1000 hours flying experience, all passed the necessary tests, all could have been astronauts if only they were afforded the opportunity.
[below, Jerrie Cobb photographed during testing]
They are collectively known as the Mercury 13, there’s a great blog entry about them here and a brilliant PBS documentary too.
Their names are Myrtle Cagle, Jerrie Cobb, Janet Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, Wally Funk, Sarah Gorelick, Jane “Janey” Hart, Jean Hixson, Rhea Hurrle, Gene Nora Stumbough, Irene Leverton, Jerri Sloan and Bernice Steadman. They should be remembered and celebrated for their role in the history of space exploration.
It wasn’t until 2 decades later that Sally Ride became the first woman in space in 1983.
7 of the surviving members of the Mercury 13 are pictured below, 33 years later in 1995.
I can’t believe Miss Congeniality, a movie from 2001, tackles internalised sexism, women’s self-defence and rape (”did you report him? “no, that stuff happens all the time.” “no, no it doesn’t!”) and shows the story of a tough, independent woman learning that she can still be all of that, and so can other women, while still being beautiful and sexy
also, competing women supporting each other??
“which one of these… is… the lipstick…”
*huge group of women freak out and converge on her to help her prepare*
HER WHOLE FINAL PERFORMANCE IS LITERALLY JUST TEACHING WOMEN HOW TO DEFEND THEMSELVES FROM ASSAILANTS
AND I FORGOT ABOUT CALIFORNIA SHOUTING TO THE CROWD ABOUT “I WANNA LET ALL THE LESBIANS KNOW, IF I CAN MAKE IT TO THE TOP 10, SO CAN YOU”
“I realised that these women are smart, terrific people, who just want to make a difference in the world.”
“For me, this experience has been one of the most rewarding, and liberating experiences of my life.”
have you ever had a weird sort of crush on one of your friends where you cant actually tell if its a crush or not??? do i want to kiss you?? do i just really enjoy being your friend????? who knows? not me
Hi there I’m here to unnecessarily add that this is called alterous attraction! It’s basically ambiguous attraction that’s indistinguishable between platonic and romantic and/or sexual attraction. It’s not uncommon to feel alterous attraction towards friends/squishes/crushes. This post describes it pretty well, actually. In my experience, it’s like… I’d be cool with dating this person but being their friend is just as good. Like I wouldn’t actively start a romantic relationship, but I wouldn’t turn one down. So yeah! Alterous attraction. It’s nice but confusing.
I DIDNT KNOW THERE WAS A WORD FOR IT.
What the…there’s a freakin word for it woah
That is almost entirely my experience of attraction, huh.
Steel Phoenix Studios 