The Perfect Explanation of Privilege – In One Powerful Punchline
“The Pencilsword” is a comic strip by Toby Morris, an illustrator from New Zealand. His most recent comic, “On a Plate” hits hard at the heart of the issues of concerning wealth and privilege.
How many times have you heard the “I’ve never been handed anything on a platter” argument in regard to social security and other social benefits?
Toby wrecks this argument by showing how two children can grow up, be loved and supported, and yet still have two very different outcomes.
Make sure to follow all the way to the end for the powerful punchline. This comic is an increasingly sad reality for far too many of this nation’s children and families.
Reblogged from the source since someone deleted the text at the bottom.
Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows over the weekend, and his comments about voter fraud have earned him justifiably dim reviews. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump and Fact Checker Glenn Kessler dealt with those claims in depth.
Here’s the key exchange, with “Face the Nation’s” John Dickerson (emphasis added):
DICKERSON: When I talked to Republicans on the Hill, they wonder, what in the White House – what have you all learned from this experience with the executive order?
MILLER: Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is – is – is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.
The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.
“Will not be questioned.” That is an incredible claim to executive authority – and one we can expect to hear plenty more about. Trump has beaten around this bush plenty, yes. But Miller just came out and said it: that the White House doesn’t recognize judges’ authority to review things such as his travel ban.
It might have been excused as a little over-exuberance, except that Miller said similar things in his other Sunday show appearances.
He said on “Meet the Press”: “The bottom line is that a district judge – a district judge in Seattle – cannot make immigration law for the United States, cannot give foreign nationals and foreign countries rights they do not have and cannot prevent the president of the United States from suspending the admission of refugees from Syria.”
And on “Fox News Sunday”: “This is a judicial usurpation of the power. It is a violation of judges’ proper roles in litigating disputes. We will fight it. And we will make sure that we take action to keep from happening in the future what’s happened in the past.”
****
Gehayi here. So yeah.Miller, an advisor and speech writer to 45 and one of the co-authors of the Muslim ban (the other being Bannon), just openly declared war on judges’ power to review a president’s actions and declare them unconstitutional. Never mind that this is how federal and state courts work in the U.S.A., and that any state or federal court can challenge the constitutionality of a law. Miller wants an end to judicial review and an end to the judiciary checking the power of 45.
Which would mean ending constitutional democracy as practiced in America.
Just the fact that someone close to the president wants this is appalling.
Now realize that 45–who has never shown that he grasps what the word “NO!” means, and who regards refusal of anything he wants as a horrendous personal affront for which the refuser must be punished–completely agrees.
you don’t have a president, you have a dictator.
I mean I understand that the realisation of this fact is one of slowly mounting horror. But you best believe it now, it saves time
Now is an excellent time to look at your history books and start thinking about what comes next. Try the 1930s as a start.
There are women from my childhood who remain important today. Women I’ve never met. Women who I only saw playing sports, usually on TV. There were many of these women in the 1990s: women who proved that they could compete, excel, and win; but Angela James was always one of the most important women to me.
James meant something to me as a kid. I didn’t face the same difficulties she did as a child, nor did I experience the racism she dealt with as a woman of color playing ice hockey (which at the time was predominantly white), but she had a huge impact on me. For starters, she played my favorite sport. She played center and defense, like me. She had short hair like me. She was a tomboy as a kid, and not stereotypically feminine, like me. She was seen as big and tough and so was I.
If people don’t think women’s bodies are being controlled, they aren’t looking hard enough.
In contrast my husband got a vasectomy and no one even once suggested I might have an opinion on that.
ok so lemme take a minute here to just be fucking mad as all hell.
I don’t like to butt in on people’s posts, lord knows I don’t like starting shit but lemme take a second to tell y’all about getting ur lady bits put out of comission.
I, at the age of 12 years, was diagnosed with PCOS. For you that don’t know what that is, PCOS, or Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, is a LIFELONG medical condition where groups of cysts grow on your ovaries causing the production of female hormones in your body to go batshit nuts and cause a whole sideshow of different symptoms such as but not limited to:
Irregular cardiac function (it’s a scary time)
severe weight gain and trouble losing weight (i may eat healthy and work out daily but until I was down to 1-2 meals a day of spinach i wasn’t losing weight)
severe adolescent acne, and adult acne
extra hair on the face, chest, arms, legs, thumbs, belly and back (I shave my face everyday before class and usually before I go to bed)
thinning hair on the scalp due to an excess of male hormones
irregular or no periods
HEAVY periods
EXTREME PERIOD PAIN
depression and anxiety
pelvic pain
increased risk for type 2 diabetes
Increased for all female reproductive cancers due to infrequency of periods
Now, TMI, but I recently had my first period in 6 FUCKING YEARS. Due to the nature of PCOS generally when you have a period it’s because one of the cysts on your ovaries has burst releasing a flood of hormones into your system as well as built up toxins. Basically, when I had mine my body went into full on panic mode, nausea and vomiting, extreme fatigue, mood swings like you wouldn’t believe, my body went from being relatively alright to the cliffs of fucking Gallipoli in an hour flat. The kicker was on top of all that I had cramping so bad I actually blacked out.
Given that I know this is likely to happen again before I reach menopause, I decided to book an appointment with my local Planned Parenthood (applaud those lovely people and what they do) to see what my options were to make sure it never happens again. After telling me about various hormonal treatments they could prescribe me (not pills but IUDs shots and various other things) I asked them if it was possible for me to get a partial hysterectomy. A partial hysterectomy removes the uterus but keeps the ovaries so that they still are able to produce estrogen. The lady I had the appointment with looked at me with a look of the utmost pity and told me that unfortunately due to my age there would be likely no chance for any doctor to do it. When I pressed her on the topic she said that the most common excuse doctors will give you for it is that you’re too young, you might change your mind and want to have children later in life.
Now I dunno if y’all reading this are currently seeing anything wrong with this scenario here but I was told that I, someone who can’t have kids, doesn’t want kids, has never wanted kids, and would be put at severe risk of life threatening complications, have to have had children before anyone would consider giving me a surgery that not only would undoubtedly improve the quality of my life but also remove
Well, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get a referral from her during the appointment, I went home and decided to research this bullshit. Turns out that there is something commonly evoked when women want to have any part of their reproductive system put out of commission called the three child rule. Basically if you are young, doctors usually wont let you get either a hysterectomy or a partial hysterectomy UNLESS you have already had three children.
HOLD THE MOTHERFUCKING PHONE FOR A WHOLE SECOND AND THINK ABOUT THIS
By most doctors standards, YOU are REQUIRED as a woman to PHYSICALLYGIVE BIRTH to at least 3 CHILDREN before you are able to have any of your reproductive system removed or decommissioned.
And that isn’t even the worst part of it all, these standards DO NOT change when the patient is at high risk for reproductive cancers!
How fucking miserable is it that to take control of your own fucking health in a first world country a woman has to have submitted to the gender roles of having children or actually have contracted cancer or some other immediately life threatening condition.
41, worked as an analyst-programmer for the Quebec government. “He had two young children who waited in vain for their father to return home,”
Azzeddine Soufiane, 57, was originally from Morocco and emigrated to Quebec City to attend Laval University. He was known as a backbone for newly arrived Muslims. “He was almost like the president of the community. He helped and guided all the people who arrived here – students, families,” said a member of his Moroccan community group.
Khaled Belkacemi, 60, was from Algeria. He received a master’s in chemical engineer from Université de Sherbrooke and was a professor at Laval University.
Boubaker Thabti, 44, was a pharmacy worker from Tunisia who lived only 5 minutes away from the mosque. He had two children, ages 3 and 10.
Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39, were friends and civil-servants from Guinea that lived in the same apartment building, but were not related despite sharing the same last name. Ibrahima Barry worked for the health insurance board and had four young children, and Mamadou was an IT worker who left behind two sons.
I want every news org to put this fact front and center when writing about the shooting.
My mother had three pregnancies, and two children. She had a miscarriage, between my brother and I, in that four year span between our births, there was another pregnancy, another child desperately wanted, who didn’t live to term.
My mother had her pre-natal care, and her post-miscarriage care, at Planned Parenthood.
Because it was the best place for her. Because at the time, she had a two year old child and a bike and they were living just around that nice little sweet spot between ‘desperately poor’ and ‘almost have enough to consider a savings account.‘ And when you are poor, and female, and need health services, Planned Parenthood is there.
And my mother walked past the protesters, walked past the people who screamed at her about not killing her baby, about how she was a whore, and she was going to hell. My mother, in mourning for a child that she had lost, blaming herself, hating herself for failing at this most feminine of things, walked through that, to care for herself, to get the medical care she needed. So that someday, two years later, she could have me.
I cannot speak to the courage that must have taken. But that path is walked by thousands of women. Every single day.
She donated to Planned Parenthood until her death. And she said to me, that the people who screamed at her saw her only as a vessel for a baby. They didn’t care about her, they didn’t care about her baby, either. They were pro-birth, not pro-life, because none of them would be there after her baby was born, to offer help and support and care.
The protesters didn’t care about her. And the medical professionals inside did. It is the right of every woman to have access to safe, affordable, quality health care, no matter where she comes from, what her income is, or what choices she makes with her life. And that is what these kind of bills are attempting to take away.
So, since this has now popped up on Reddit and Facebook and countless other sites, le trolls have returned. Hi! If you’re here to tell me my mom was a horrible person, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree. I knew her a little better than you did, you see.
My mother was raised Catholic, and married at 18 to a man going off for military service. She was the first person in her family EVER to go to college, even if she took a 12 year break between starting and finishing. Having babies slows things down, she said to me. But it doesn’t have to stop you.
She was a scientist, her final published paper before she retired and shortly before she died, was on advances in cellular regeneration that could help repair traumatic spinal cord injuries. Her name is on four patents, and dozens of papers.
Before that, she spent years working at a breast milk bank, to help babies who couldn’t take commercial formulas grow and thrive, even if their mothers couldn’t produce enough to keep them healthy.
She raised two children, often under less than ideal circumstances, and she always, ALWAYS mourned the child she lost. And she defended, without flinching and without a second thought, the right of every woman to make the choice that was right for her and her life.
And I donate to Planned Parenthood in her name. And every time one of you decides to come here and tell me my dead mother is roasting in hell? I’m going to add another dollar to that donation.
THIS IS WHY EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP TALKING ABOUT THE BOWL GREEN THING! It doesn’t MATTER that you’re talking about it to mock it, every time those three words appear together it becomes a little more true.
STOP REPEATING THE LIES. Just state the true facts, over and over
This is tricky on tumblr and facebook, because when you add a reply with the truth, your followers end up seeing the wrong stuff first, and what’s at the start of a post is going to stick in the brain more than what’s at the end. Every time you’re commenting to correct your idiot uncle on facebook, all your friends are seeing the garbage articles he shared.
Consider carefully if giving something more exposure is really worth correcting it (especially if you have a lot of followers). Maybe it would be better to make a new post with only the truth, perhaps tagging the people who (re)posted the original thing
I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:
IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.
1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.
2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.
3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”
4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”
5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.
TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.
Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.
why on earth doesn’t this have more notes
I actually had to do this once. She lived.
if you scroll past this on your dash you are absolutely heartless.
Reblog this!! This can save somebody’s life!
reblog.
help.
do not scroll down.
I SWEAR TO GOD IF ANYONE SCROLLS PAST THIS WITHOUT REBLOGGING I WILL LITTERALLY FIND THEM AND GIVE THEM A LECTURE
may I just update this?
see the little thing that says help?
Don’t ever scroll past this post. FUCKING NEVER SCROLL PAST!!!
Always Reblog. You might actually Save a Life!!
Spread awareness. It might save a life
always always alwaysss reblog this!
This is important!
Reblogging as it could literally save someone life xx
Have the character have transferred to a different ship and be doing just fine. He sends Sulu messages about how he’s doing. Then respect why Chekov was originally there and make the new person in his seat an Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, or Saudi Arabian woman. Chekov was there to predict a future where the Russians, America’s greatest enemies at the time of the shows creation, were our friends and allies. Pay respect to why he was created by placing a Muslim woman from a country that America has warred with in the seat. Give her a gold dress, black long sleeve undershirt, black leggings, and a federation uniform approved hijab. The movies would be creating representation and paying respects to what Chekov was there for. Put a muslim woman in the navigators chair and let her fly us through the stars.
Steel Phoenix Studios 