I took my father to see Rogue One today. I’ve wanted to take him for a while. I wanted my Mexican father, with his thick Mexican accent, to experience what it was like to see a hero in a blockbuster film, speak the way he does. And although I wasn’t sure if it was going to resonate with him, I took him anyway. When Diego Luna’s character came on screen and started speaking, my dad nudged me and said, “he has a heavy accent.” I was like, “Yup.” When the film was over and we were walking to the car, he turns to me and says, “did you notice that he had an accent?” And I said, “Yeah dad, just like yours.” Then my dad asked me if the film had made a lot of money. I told him it was the second highest grossing film of 2016 despite it only being out for 18 days in 2016 (since new year just came around). He then asked me if people liked the film, I told him that it had a huge following online and great reviews. He then asked me why Diego Luna hadn’t changed his accent and I told him that Diego has openly talked about keeping his accent and how proud he is of it. And my dad was silent for a while and then he said, “And he was a main character.” And I said, “He was.” And my dad was so happy. As we drove home he started telling me about other Mexican actors that he thinks should be in movies in America. Representation matters.
Hello Guys! A lot of you have been asking for my dad’s reaction after Diego Luna tweeted out my post, and here he is. He was off to work this morning when I snagged him…
High heeled shoes don’t become flats if you break the heels off.
The posts of earrings aren’t sharp.
Nail polish takes a long time to dry and smudges when wet.
You can’t hold in a period like pee.
Inserting a tampon is not arousing or sexual in any way, ever.
Feel free to add your own.
– Bras leave red marks on the skin under and around boobs and it is a magical experience when taken off.
– Make up can take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how skilled you are.
– Taking hair out of a ponytail after wearing it for hours does not make it perfectly straight when it comes down.
– Hair when wet sticks to the skin it no longer flows, idiot.
-When women with long hair kiss, turn around, do anything, their hair falls in the way.
– Stockings are itchy and tear like wet paper bags.
– Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different.
– Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble
– Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn
– Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink”
– EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
We have never, ever looked in a mirror and silently described our nude bodies to ourselves, especially the size/shape/weight/resemblance to fruit/etc. of our breasts.
when lying down, turning around or moving about in any way, boobs (especially large ones) change their shape. They just don’t stand there like they’re waiting for the fricken bus or some shit. they move, they flatten, sometimes they *gasp* sag. neither is a sign of ugliness or age.
If boobs spill out over the top of the bra cup, that bra doesn’t fit
Not every nude moment is sexual
Cat calls can be terrifying & are never pleasant.
Being checked out by strange men is usually uncomfortable.
Donald Trump has called for a shutdown of the Internet in certain areas to stop the spread of terror.
In a speech at the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina,
on Monday, Trump referenced the use by ISIS of social media as a
recruitment tool. He recommended a discussion with Bill Gates to shut
off parts of the Internet.
“We’re
losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. “We have to
go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand
what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas,
closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of
speech, freedom of speech.‘ These are foolish people. We have a lot of
foolish people.”
Some totalitarian governments do it
The notion that the Internet could be shut off is not completely off
base. North Korea does it. Some countries have been known to shut off
Internet service to their citizens in times of crisis. Egypt restricted
the Internet during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
Other
countries block certain Internet services and sites. China is the most
famous example, forbidding most social networking sites as well as
websites that deal with subjects the government doesn’t want its
citizens to know about.
Most Western countries, including the
United States, regulate the Internet very loosely. There are few
restrictions about what American citizens can do and say on the
Internet. Child pornography is one example of forbidden Internet
activity in the United States – Google is barred from linking to it,
and websites cannot display images of it.
Why the United States can’t do it
But a full-on “closing up” of the Internet “in certain areas” would be
an impossible task. There are so many players with so much redundancy
built into the system, that the Internet is not just something that can
be turned off with a wave of a magic wand.
Virtually every part in the United States has multiple Internet service provider options.
Comcast, (CMCSA) Time Warner Cable (TWC) and the other major broadband companies don’t overlap much. But Verizon (VZ, Tech30), AT&T (T, Tech30), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS)
all provide the same service to roughly the same areas. Satellite
companies also provide Internet to most parts of the country.
Removing Internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require
those companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to
restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.
America can’t shut off the Internet overseas either
Shutting down Internet service in foreign countries could be even more difficult.
Despite a common belief to the contrary, the United States does not
control the global Internet. Servers on foreign soil serve up the Web
and other Internet services to people living abroad.
So foreign
Internet infrastructure would need to be disrupted or shut down to turn
off service in certain areas – already a tricky task made even harder
if the countries and companies controlling those servers and cell towers
abroad don’t cooperate.
Whatever, Donald Trump wouldn’t want the Internet shut off anyway. Then he couldn’t tweet.
While Trump clearly doesn’t know the first thing about how the
internet works (outside of his Twitter account), don’t let “it couldn’t happen in America” blind us to some
very real ways in which the internet can be made less free, less
accessible, and less useful for things other than government propaganda
and surveillance. And don’t doubt that President Trump (and his party)
would be happy to implement them.
the time honored tool of every dictator, censorship is one of the first things out of trump’s mouth. this is real censorship, as opposed to when someone tells you you’re wrong on twitter.
it should come as no surprise whatsoever that 45′s pick for FCC commissioner, ajit pai, is SUPER excited to strip net neutrality from american citizens. if you didn’t know, net neutrality is the principle that currently allows you to access whatever internet site you want, at the same speed as all the other sites, without your ISP spying on you TOO much. the US regulations that protect you in this way are an annoying speed bump for ISPs in their quest to wring you like a wet dishrag until all your money falls out, and of course Team Spraytan works for them, not you.
and hey, if they do want to enact the fuckin lunatic censorship proposed in the article above, getting rid of these protections will be their first stop. what’s the most likely target of this anti-internet offensive? obviously, it’ll be american activists, scientists, and anybody who’s ever used the phrase “tiny hands” – or, as all those folks will be called in newspeak, terrorists.
just one more thing you should keep on your list of Horrible Things To Yell At Representatives About.
Romani people exist okay? We exist, and we experience
racism, and prejudice and fucking casual hatred and erasure and constant, never
ending microaggressions and if you are a white activist I can almost guarantee
you are not fucking helping.
Stop giving the total number of Holocaust victims as six
million, it was nearly twice that. Better yet, just stop using the Holocaust as
a rhetorical device in general if you’re not Jewish or Romani.
But okay fine you wanna talk about the Holocaust? Lets talk
about the fucking Holocaust.
Did you know entire dialects of our language went extinct
because everyone who spoke them was killed?
Did you know Romani children were the favorites of the Nazi
scientists for experimentation because they were easily bribed with chocolate
and toys? Josef Mengele (May he burn in every afterlife) sewed two four-year-old
twin children together, back to back. Their names were Guido and Ida and their own
mother had to kill them out of mercy.
Non-romani and non-Jewish people need to stop comparing what
is happening to the Holocaust because guess what? You don’t understand our fear.
You don’t understand how we’re feeling. I watched the fucking president sign an
order to ban Muslim people from entering this country and now I cant stop
having nightmares about brown triangles and fucking gas chambers.
and you do not
know how this feels, you do not understand the visceral cultural memory that
exists in ever Jewish and Romani person; I guarantee you do not get it.
In Mississippi you can still fine a Rom for moving to your
county. Texas law refer to Prostitutes, Vagabonds and G*psies in the same
breath and fines all of them $500 for existing in public. In Pennsylvania it is
illegal to even be Romani without a license. A license to exist, a license to
be allowed to be alive. And that’s just in the U.S, where I live. Romani
children in Europe still go to segregated
fucking schools
And I don’t have an Instagram anymore because I was sick of
seeing white girls appropriate my culture and call themselves g*psies as if it wasn’t
a slur, insisting that they just love my culture so much and yet none of them are
willing to defend me against the Nazis who want to finish killing my people
I wonder if my survival will be predicated on how happy I can
keep my racist white family. I wonder if they will be the ones who turn me in.
I look at every white person around me insisting that we need to give Trump a
chance and all can see is their backs turning on me when everything goes to
shit.
I cant even go shopping without seeing t-shirt slapped with
racial slurs, watching businesses being built atop my people graves, see our
suffering reduced to an aesthetic, as if Romani aren’t still forcefully
sterilized when they go to the hospital for cold medicine
Are you fucking listening? Do you understand what I’m
telling you? I’m not a prop, im not an aesthetic, im not fucking Halloween
costume, im a real actual person whose people are suffering I am so fucking sick of leftists and
so-called activists who refuse to acknowledge that Romani people even exist,
let alone try to, gods forbid, help us.
The only gadje I ever see defend Romani people are Jewish
people. And that’s great, Jewish people thank you, but why are the only gadje
who care about us getting murdered by Nazis the one’s who are also getting murdered by Nazis?
Stop talking about fucking “peaceful transitions of power”
and “don’t fight hate with hate” and “if you punch Nazis you’re just as bad”
stop fucking telling Jewish and Romani people they are just as bad as the
monsters who fucking slaughtered millions of their people
Fucking hell I don’t even know what the point of this post
is im just so fucking done with your
shitty activism and your half-assed defenses and your “listen to both sides of
the argument even if one side is LITERAL NAZIS” nonsense and your refusal to
listen when people call you out on your bullshit im just done
“why are the only gadje who care about us getting murdered by nazis the ones who are also getting murdered by nazis?”
OH MY GOD. YES, BABY, YES. I AM SO HAPPY. I WAS THERE FOR HER WHEN TIK TOK CAME OUT AND EVERYONE TREATED HER LIKE SHIT AND I AM HERE FOR HER NOW. YES YES YESSSS
But like let’s talk about this for a minute? She just fucking won a major court battle against her abuser, like you go babe, tick tock round the clock and brush your teeth with a bottle of jack. She also won against the people who kept her abuser in a position of power over her. Like this is such a big deal. She gets to make music again and that’s awesome, but she’s a fucking rockstar for a whole host of other reasons.
Screenshotted this thread because you all need to see it.
(Cis LGB, I’m expecting you to reblog this.)
Little Light:
Let us assume that
our opponents are competent and have been studying our defenses for
some time, looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. They put out
little feints and test attacks, seeing who will defend who, who can
be divided off from the group, and so on. We’ve seen this. All of
these questions they need answers to: will Jews defend Muslims? Will
Asians support Black struggle? Where can the wedges be put in? The
Alt-Right 4Chan types are always talking about observing and
infiltrating online anti-oppression communities for intel and laughs.
All these little tests. What if they make up a pretend pedophilia
orientation? Will people defend it? Will they tight and divide over
it?
One vulnerability
they’ve consistently turned up is transmisogyny. Lots of groups can
be induced to vilify or wish away trans women. Useful! Remember a
little while ago when Milo put out that petition? “Remove the T
from LGBT”? They watched who signed and promoted that thing. It
was couched in anti-oppression boilerplate. And look! Cis gay men
promoted it. Some feminists and womanists promoted it. Useful intel.
They learned helpful info there: many cis LGB people were raring to
turn on trans people. They’d even say it was for their own
protection. They counted up who signed on, who elaborated on it, who
was excited about it. I’m looking at you, TERFs and enablers, in
particular. (They even discovered that some fanatical anti-trans
feminists would happily join forces with homophobic Christians, to
hurt trans women.) Nobody thought that T-out-of-LGBT petition was
going to DO anything. There’s nobody who DECIDES that. It was a
solidarity test balloon. So these laughing nihilists went
looking—along many lines–for cracks in solidarity, joints in the
armor, people who could be attacked 1st.
Why do I point this
out now? Because this week the rumor mill floated a general
anti-LGBTQ EO or bill was coming, & they gauged opposition.
Supposedly they decided that opposition to this anti-LGBTQ
legislation would be too much for now, and put it in the not-yet
column. And yet: Now the word is they’re paring down to a
specifically anti-trans EO. One focused on legal documents, probably
framed as for nat’l security. (After all, mismatched documents are
fraud, right? Terrorists could be using fake ID. And there’s all that
voter fraud to address. Right?)
Previous Intel
operations (& polls) have told them that the majority of the
country has turned to support LGB rights—but NOT trans rights. They
know from watching our intra-movement arguments online that there’s a
long history of cis LGB folks throwing trans folks under the bus.
They have tested to see if cis LGB people will readily abandon trans
people to save themselves. (Yes.) If they’ll outright attack us.
(Yes.) They’ve tested if there are blocs w/in the cis LGB community
so dedicated to hurting trans people that they’ll ally wtthe right
wing. (Yes.) They’ve watched some of these anti-trans fanatics STILL
obsessing over eradicating us, prioritizing that, even while the
country is on fire. Lo and behold: the regime floats anti-LGBTQ
legislation, withdraws it for now. Now they’re floating anti-trans
legislation. Right on time.
Their research
indicates that the general public will happily let trans people burn
first as expendable. That cis LGB people will, too. The plan? To
remove our ability to get legal ID documents. There goes voting,
travel, med. care, having an answer to “your papers, please.”
That and support for keeping us out of public bathrooms, away from
schools, away from gendered spaces, out of jobs and housing. Public
life.
I’m saying this
because they have good reason to believe they’re right that they can
come for us and no one will stop them. Their little intel operations
indicate that not only will no one stop them hurting trans people,
many will even help. Even cis LGB people. I’m saying this especially
for everyone who gave them reason to believe this. Who looked the
other way when trans lives were on the line.
When they come for
us. (They will come for us. They are about to come for us.) Prove
them wrong. Prove them wrong. Prove them wrong. Please.
Remember that the
specter of trans women was already a useful wedge issue &
get-out-the-vote driver in the 2016 campaign. There’s precedent. We
will be used as a weapon and a vulnerability against the rest of you
for as long as our opponents know we won’t be protected by the Left.
One of our lessons from fighting the anti-Muslim E0s in the last week
is this: we have to deny them every victory. Each one counts.
Whatever we teach them about who we will leave behind will be used to
hurt all of us. We have to show them we will abandon no one. not ever
Now is a time when it is clear & stark: solidarity saves us.
Together, we outnumber them. Together, we can win. Let us not be
broken apart. All of you responding with pledges to have our backs:
thank you. Bring your friends on board. As Octavia Butler said: So be
it. See to it.
Steel Phoenix Studios 