an incomplete list of times a bat has yelled for superman’s help

- six years after they met, batman called for superman’s help for the first time, when he realized he couldn’t save a child from a fire

- dick grayson, age 8, called for superman to save batman from a death trap

- dick grayson, age 9, called superman to open a jam jar (strawberry)

- alfred, age lots, called superman to save batman from a death trap

- dick grayson, age 11, called superman to open a jam jar (grape)

- bruce wayne called superman to comfort dick grayson, who had just been fired as robin

- ace the bathound barked for superman to save batman from a death trap

- bruce wayne called superman to ask why, precisely, dick grayson was now superhero-ing under a kryptonian name

- jason todd called superman to save batman from a death trap

- batman called superman to save jason todd from a death trap. superman was in a different solar system.  he didn’t hear his name.

- barbara gordon called superman to help subdue supergirl, who was mind-controlled at the time

- dick grayson, age 19, called superman to open a jam jar (raspberry)

- tim drake called superman to save batman from a death trap

- stephanie brown called superman to see if she could

- tim drake called superman to tell superboy to take his earbuds out

- batman called superman because the batplane had just exploded at 17,000 feet, and he can’t fly, at all

- jason todd called superman to save batman from a death trap that he had himself set up

- dick grayson, age 24, called superman to open a jam jar (fig)

- dick grayson called superman to ask him why he hadn’t saved his father

- damian wayne called superman to save batman (dick grayson) from a death trap

- cassandra cain called superman so he could interpret her signs for a particularly skeevy alleyway ruffian.  he refused to interpret some of the signs.

- batman called superman to tell him to get lois some damn flowers already so she would stop texting him

- a failsafe device made by barbara gordon and tim drake automatically called superman to save batman from a death trap

- duke thomas called superman because he was dared to and he didn’t think it would work (it did)

- dick grayson, age 26, called superman to open a jam jar (apricot)

- damian wayne called superman to tell superboy (jon kent) to take his earbuds out

- selina kyle called superman to save a kitten from a tree

- dick grayson, age 28, called superman to save batman from a jam jar (giant, acid-filled)

@lunna-does-real-doodle​ Dick doesn’t open jam jars, didn’t you read the post

[Above post reads: Luna-does-real-doodle replied to the text post: “Dick needs to stop opening jam jars fucking hell lmao”. In pain text, mycroftrh replies “ Dick doesn’t open jam jars, didn’t you read the post” . End.]

Wtf is sephora

It sounds scary

isn’t that the guy with the long white hair from final fantasy

no your thinking of sephiroth, a sephora is an angel belonging to the highest order of angels

No you’re thinking of a Seraph

A sephora is a second year college or high school student

No, you’re thinking of sophomore. A sephora is when you use your phone to take a picture of yourself.

no, you’re thinking of a selfie. a sephora is a calm breeze.

No, you’re thinking of a zephyr. A sephora is one of those Greek vases with the two handles and the pictures.

You’re thinking of an amphora. Sephora is the web browser you have to use on iOS devices.

You’re thinking of Safari.  Sephora is an informal term for the seven-week period of counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot in the Jewish calendar.

You’re thinking of Sefiras. Sephora is a bright blue gemstone best known for combining with Ruby to create Garnet and lead the Crystal Gems, training Pokemon, and/or assisting Steel to fight against time’s intrusions into our realm.

No, you’re thinking of sapphire. Sephora is actually a part of a flower; it protects the flower in bud and supports the petals in bloom.

No, you’re thinking of sepal. Sephora is the wife of Moses, who lead the Israelites people out of Egypt. 

No, you’re thinking of Tzipporah. Sephora was an ancient Greek poet who inspired a lot of lady-lovin’.

No, you’re thinking of Sappho.

Sephora is the youngest of the five Marx brothers.

No, you’re thinking of Zeppo.

Sephora is the Heimdall’s sister.

No no no guys, you’re thinking of Sif. Sephora is a venereal disease that turns your brain to swiss cheese, going so far as to destroy external features like the nose. Famous gangster Al Capone suffered from sephora.

No, you’re thinking of syphilis. Sephora is that radiant feeling you get when you have found perfect peace and happiness.

No, you’re thinking of euphoria. Sephora’s a fucking makeup store you dipshits.

Only blogging because this is my favorite tumblr post and i can never find it when I need to.

@megapupluv

Whenever someone tries to claim that evolution is a lie, I send them a picture of platybelodon.

1. It’s an excellent example of transitional evolution.

2. It’s a mess who would intentionally do this and why

3. It makes them piss themselves a little.

“Evolution is just a theory-”

I busted out laughing in the middle of Christmas dinner. This is the best post of 2015 that I’ve seen. 

Not to be rude, but evolution is just a theory, albeit a probable one.

You can’t prove it, the only thing you can do is disprove it, which is what good scientists are supposed to do, try to disprove their theory.

Ah, but that’s the thing; A scientific theory IS a proven fact, and evolution is a very good example of an undeniably true one!

I’ve been meaning to write a post about what the meaning of a scientific theory is, and this seems like a good opportunity.

In science we have theories, and we have laws. It’s a very common misconception that a scientific theory is a an unproven hypothesis. This is understandable, but leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. A scientific theory isn’t the same as what we commonly refer to as a ‘theory’. Here’s a definition:

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. x 

Compare this to the definition of a scientific law:

A scientific law is a statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspects of the universe. A scientific law always applies under the same conditions, and implies that there is a causal relationship involving its elements. x

This means, basically, that a law summarizes observations about some sort of natural phenomena (usually mathematically). A good example is Newton’s law of gravity! 

Newton’s Law of Gravity explains through mathematics how different bodies react to each other because of this force we call gravity, both on earth and in space, but it doesn’t explain why it happens or even what gravity actually is. No explanation, therefor a law!

Then we have theories, which not only document phenomena, but give explainations as to why these phenomena happen and what they are. A scientific theory requires more testable evidence than a law, and usually encompasses multiple laws and explains them more thoroughly. For example, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Newton’s law of gravity was testable, but it was only after Einstein proposed the theory of relativity that we started to understand what gravity actually is and how it functions. Einstein was able to give us explainations mathematically for why the laws of physics work as they do. Explanations for how it worked, therefor a theory!

(It’s also important to remember that a scientific theory and a scientific law are two very different things, and one can never become the other. A theory will always be a theory, and a law will always be a law.)

One of my favorite examples of this is the laws of Mendelian inheritance. 

Long before we knew what genetics were, farmers were breeding for favorable traits. They didn’t know where they came from or how they were passed from one organism to the next, but they knew that if they bred a large dog with another large dog, they’d get large puppies, and they knew that if they bred only their best produce that their plants would produce better produce in the future.

Gregor Johann Mendel started conducting experiments by hybridizing pea plants, and was able to prove that this consistently happened. By doing this he created three separate laws that all fall under the Laws of Inheritance; The Law of Segregation, the Law of Independent Assortment, and the Law of Dominance. It gets a little complicated here and I’m not an expert on DNA, but I’ll try to summarize.

The Law of Segregation states that all organisms contain two alleles for each trait, and that those separate during meiosis so each gamete only contains one of them. That means that offspring receives a pair of alleles from its parents for each trait, resulting in one allele for each trait from each parent. For example, a calico cat and a tabby may breed and produce 4 tabby kittens, but all of those kittens will also carry the genetic information of a calico.

The Law of Independent Assortment states that alleles for these traits are passed independently of one another during gamete formation. For example, if the calico is a manx and the tabby is a scottish fold, the kittens can inherit a short tail without inheriting their calico parents coloring. They can also look entirely like one parent despite carrying the genetic information of both. Each trait is passed independently of all other traits.

The Law of Dominance states that recessive alleles will be masked by dominant alleles. For example, blue eyes in cats is a recessive trait. Therefor even if the scottish fold has blue eyes (is a carrier and affected), the dominant trait eyes of the manx will determine the color of the kittens eyes, and we’ll only have a slim chance of producing affected, blue eyed kittens if the manx also carries the recessive blue eyed gene, and those genes line up. (If I’ve made any mistakes here, I’d appreciate someone with more knowledge on genetics letting me know)

But you’ll notice he didn’t show how or why this happened, he was just able to observe it and prove that it did. It wasn’t until the Chromosome Theory of Inheritance was discovered that we could explain why. This was the theory that explained that chromosomes are what carry genetic material and pass these traits from one generation to the next. 

It’s a fundamental, unifying theory of genetics that shapes how we conduct our science today. This theory is the basis of genetic engineering, which has had a huge impact on modern science. Just for example, the manufacturing of drugs (insulin and vaccines!), gene therapy, the genetic engineering of lab animals, and, most famously, agriculture. AKA, GMOs.

This leads into another requirement of a theory; Being supported by numerous other fields of science. Genetics is one of the sciences that hugely supports the Theory of Evolution. This is how we’ve been able to sequence DNA and discover how closely all life on earth is related, and how the DNA of humans and chimps is nearly identical.

x And this isn’t the only field of science that supports the validity of the Theory of Evolution. 

We have radioisotope dating! Isotopes make up all matter on earth, and by measuring the decay of radioactive isotopes, we can date rock layers. We can do this because we know the rate of radioactive decay. This is how we know that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. We’ve used this to date fossils and prove that transitional forms came between connected species, and that humans and modern animals didn’t live alongside dinosaurs.

We have paleontology! The fossil record shows extremely detailed evidence of evolution occurring. Evolution is so accurate in its predictions that there’s never been a single fossil found in a place that it shouldn’t be. For example, the transitional fossils between dinosaurs and modern birds is found right in the middle, exactly where we’d expect it to be. So is the ancestor of platybelodon, and its relatives as they became our modern elephants! We’re able to predict so accurately where fossils should be located that we’ve been able to pick sites to excavate based entirely on that, then find the fossils we expected! Predictive power is a huge part of a proven scientific theory.

We have molecular biology! Which proves that gene sequences among extremely different organisms are still related. The basic structure of all DNA on the planet is in the form of the double helix, and while we predictably have nearly all the same DNA as our primate cousins, over half of our DNA is also identical to banana plants!

Then we have embryology! When we compare embryos, not only are most animals nearly indistinguishable from each other, but we see holdover traits from our previous ancestors. The most compelling examples are the fact that human fetuses, and all other mammals, have gill slits as embryos. In mammals these develop into the eustachian tubes and the ear canal, while they continue to develop into gills in fish. Humans also have tails and yolk sacs as embryos! (Also look up lanugo in fetuses, very interesting and shared among other mammals)

Then there’s biochemistry! The basic chemistry that occurs in the cells of all life on earth is extremely similar, and shows that all modern organisms had a common ancestor. For example, all animals have enzymes and hormones. Trypsin is just one that’s found in everything from humans to sea sponges.

Then biogeography! The fact that groups of organisms that are related are all found near one another is more evidence for the validity of evolution. If life didn’t evolve, there’d be no reason for certain life to only exist on certain continents, or for species to be distributed in a pattern that reflects their genetic relationships with one another.

Modern observations are extremely helpful as well! This is why we now see antibiotic resistant strains of viruses, elephants becoming less likely to have tusks because of poaching, and the peppered moth becoming darker to better camouflage itself during the industrial revolution.

There are others, but I’ll end with comparative anatomy, which is one of the coolest, imo. (I’m probably biased because I collect bones lol)

x

When you compare the skeletal structures of vertebrates, we have extremely similar structures regardless of how wildly different our environments and behaviors are. The skeletal structure of a fin is hardly the best way for a fin to be designed, but because whales evolved from terrestrial mammals, they adapted using what they had. (we can also show the full evolution of cetaceans through the fossil record, which is very cool if you want to look it up.) This is true in non-mammals as well. An excellent example is the laryngeal nerve! In fish, the nerve makes a direct line from the brain down to the larynx, which is practical and to be expected. In animals that developed longer necks, however, we see that the nerve is trapped under the aortic arch!

x

The nerve had to evolve with us as we evolved from our aquatic ancestors, so our laryngeal nerve is forced to not go from our brain to our larynx, but rather to take a detour into our chest and around the aortic arch before doubling back! 

This is amazing in giraffes, where the nerve is nearly 15 feet long because it was forced to grow as the giraffe’s neck did, and now takes a detour down the entirety of the giraffe’s neck and around the heart before returning the the larynx, which was its destination.

x There are mountains more evidence, but it’d take a lifetime to cover it all.

  So you’ve got the way a theory works a little backwards; A theory only remains a theory when it can’t be disproven, and therefor is proven accurate. For a theory to be a theory, it has to be proven true. This is why we teach other theories, for example:

Plate tectonics theory: Plate tectonics is the theory that the outer rigid layer of the earth (the lithosphere) is divided into a couple of dozen “plates” that move around across the earth’s surface relative to each other, like slabs of ice on a lake.

Cell theory: In biology, cell theory is a scientific theory which describes the properties of cells. These cells are the basic unit of structure in all organisms and also the basic unit of reproduction. and

Atomic theory: In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a scientific theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms.

In your tags you state that evolution is a theory, and therefor can’t be taught as fact. I’m sure you don’t believe that we shouldn’t teach about the existence of atoms and the function of cells because they’re ‘only theory’, so I hope this makes clearer why that notion is flawed. We accept all of these as true because we know factually that they are. 

The reason that evolution is given such intense scrutiny is because it disproves the notion that humans are a separate, superior entity to all other life on earth. This is a blow to some egos and contradicts some people’s religious beliefs. The discovery that Earth wasn’t the center of our solar system, much less the universe, was met with the same sort of scrutiny for the same reasons. The ever building proof that we’re only a tiny flicker of what has been and will be in the universe inspires strong reactions in people, for good or bad. Personally, I find it endlessly interesting!

Also, to clarify, attempting continually to disprove a theory wouldn’t necessarily be good science. When you have a theory like plate tectonics, trying to disprove it at this point really isn’t a good use of your time. We know how it works, we’ve seen it working, we can predict how it’ll work, we can prove this is how mountains formed and earthquakes happen and continents drift. Being critical and making sure things line up properly is good science, but trying to continuously disprove something we know to be fact is a waste of energy and resources.

Evolutionary theory is the basis of everything from vaccines and Glofish to agriculture, modern medicine and decoding DNA. It’s so ingrained in everything that we do, that it’s vital for people to understand how it works. 

If it were proven false tomorrow, it’d take a lot of other fields of science down with it. But most of us are understandably doubtful that it’ll happen, because it’s been undergoing this same intense scrutiny since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. That’s an awfully long time and a lot of scientific advances for there to have never been a single, solitary piece of evidence that disproved it.

To stay on theme, let’s end with a platybelodon family reunion.

Source

THANK YOU! It’s important to be aware that the scientific definition of a theory differs drastically from its colloquial usage.

This entire thread was a train ride of wonder. Props to @madsciences!

S-s-science :D

Originally posted by nerdistindustries

On gendered behaviour, feminism, and gender as emotion

You know that trans narrative. “We always knew she was a girl because she played with dolls while her brother was playing with trucks.” Trans folks are pushed to justify their gender in a way that cis people never are, most notably by the medical community. We are taught to do this, in a way that cis people have never been, even when it’s not necessary.

It felt awful to be asked by doctors to explain why I thought I needed treatment, and “I’ve been feeling awful about gendered parts of my body for several years” is never enough. I had to give details in a way that a man with gynaecomastia never would, and because I was not a trans man but a nonbinary person I also had to justify why I didn’t want testosterone treatment. I found myself recounting the time I refused to leave the house in a dress just around the time I hit puberty. Why my mother felt the need for me to wear a dress was not questioned, but my desire to not wear a dress became the subject of serious scrutiny.

At the same time, feminists are fighting a very important battle for cis women and cis men that seems entirely conflicting. Women don’t have to be feminine or submissive. Little girls don’t have to play with dolls, and boys can love cooking and dancing. When cis girls are encouraged to pursue sciences, a trans girl’s love of engineering is seen as evidence of her manliness. And why would you want to be a woman, when your body and your behaviour match up?

Most humans can probably accept the idea that what we do is not who we are. Gay men have wives and children, I can pass as not-autistic in a pinch, and so on. Women (cis and trans) can be butch and men can be femme. Anyone can be both. The myth that 80% of “trans” children grow out of it is based on studies in which playing with toys that don’t match your birth-assigned gender was enough to qualify you as trans, so it’s clear that dysphoria is quite a different thing from rejecting gender norms.

So how does that fit into the trans narrative? And what is gender?

“So if girls can act like boys and still be girls, the same is true for you. You’re nonbinary when you’re in heels, you’re nonbinary when you’re in a tux. A woman is a woman with or without her uterus. Lots of trans and nonbinary people don’t want or can’t have hormones or surgeries, so it’s obviously not required for being so. In light of all of that, how do you know that you’re nonbinary?”

No one has ever asked me in this way, but I feel the questions. When you’re the subject of inquiry from doctors, the government, and everyone you meet more than once, you start to build an idea of a collective feeling, the accumulation of every curious mind into one voice. And it’s asking, “what is gender? How do you know yours is nonbinary?”

That voice asks other questions unrelated to gender in the same way. You see it reflected in books and movies and the questions children ask adults. I’m coming to see that there is another question that is very nearly the same. “What does being in love feel like? How do you know when you’re in love?”

The usual answer is “being in love is indescribable. When you feel it, you just know.”

I just know that I’m nonbinary. It explains everything, but if you asked me to I couldn’t explain it. Knowing your gender after years of not even realising you were strange, it puts everything into perspective.

So I’m coming to think of gender as an emotion, like being in love.

“I’m sorry, but you weren’t successful in your interview this time - you’re in love, and one of the other interviewees isn’t, so we think they’ll fit the role better.”

“Welcome to the store! Over here is the section for people who’re in love, and over there is the one for people who aren’t. We do also have a section upstairs for those who’ve loved and lost, because we know how it can be good to have something a little wider at the shoulders.”

If I tell someone I’m in love, they accept it without question. I imagine if I was sitting with a group of friends and I told them I was in love, they would affirm it and be happy for me. If someone questioned my feelings, they’d be challenged: “how would you know? You can’t tell them what they’re feeling! It’s their experience!” I am respected, my feelings are taken seriously. It’s assumed that I will make major life choices based on my being in love, like moving in with someone, marrying them, maybe one day having children, etc.

If I tell someone that I am nonbinary, I am often met with skepticism - especially online, where challenging me carries fewer penalties because there are so many people and none who see the exchange are likely to care about me. I am told in various ways that I am my birth-assigned gender - a weird example of it, but still a woman, and a traitor for rejecting that womanhood. I am criticised for not embodying a gender I never chose, that was forced upon me before I could even focus my eyes, by people calling themselves feminists. “You are one of us, whether you agree or not! Now, be better at it!” I have been told that I am mentally ill, that intersex conditions are evidence that sex and therefore gender are binary, and that I will likely regret my transition. I have been called “that” by a lead clinician in a gender identity clinic. People argue about whether my pronouns are grammatically correct, or try and fail to avoid pronouns altogether. (Imagine someone repeatedly telling you that whether or not you are married to your husband is a matter of public debate.)

And so we come full circle. I feel that my transition and my neutral name and pronouns are an expression of my gender. But these things are external, and behaviour doesn’t make you a man or a woman or a nonbinary person. A woman who’s had a double mastectomy to survive cancer is still a woman. A man with a hormone disorder is still a man. My behaviour and my body are not proof that I am nonbinary.

If you move in with someone it doesn’t mean you’re in love.

It’s strange how when it comes to being trans all the assumptions are mysteriously forgotten, as part of the pattern in which we are seen as alien. Usually when someone behaves in a particular way it’s an effect, no? Emotion inspires action, that’s how it is to be human. And for gender it’s no different: we feel a gender (or no gender), and we express it - like wearing masculine clothes and having feminine body modifications like pierced ears and avoiding strongly gendered social cues altogether. This is true for trans and cis people alike.

I also feel gender dysphoria, which I don’t fully understand. It used to be a lot worse, an eternal dissociation from my body, and changing my body and name and pronouns made me feel a lot happier and less numb. When the whole world and your own body disagree with your own experience of your gender for every moment of every day, it breaks you. Doctors are sometimes willing and able to help.

And many people feel gender euphoria, where there’s no discomfort, but expressing your gender in spite of your birth assignment brings you such joy and quality of life that you’d be a fool or self-punishing to deny yourself that. (When you’re in love, the world tells you to act on it. Tell them! Say yes! Take a leap of faith, it’s worth the risk. Love is euphoric.)

We know that a single action can be an expression of a lot of different feelings. Maybe I marry someone because I’m in love with them, but maybe I do it for the right to work in a particular country. My nonbinary gender inspired me to express it by cutting my hair short, but this woman has a pixie cut too. Women are more strongly encouraged to pursue feminine crafts like knitting, but before the 1500s knitting was guild-led men’s work. My skirt could mean anything. There’s a very good chance it just means I like to wear skirts.

Things get sticky when people assume a cause from the effect. You’re wearing a dress so you must be a woman. You love ladies and you keep your hair short and you’re into mechanics, so you’re not trans enough to be a real woman. You had sex so that means you’re in love with them, right?

So much oppression uses gender, and sometimes gender gets the blame. If there were no gender, women would automatically be equal to men, right? If there is no gender, there is no gendered oppression. It’s like trying to prevent crimes of passion by eradicating love.

Like any emotion, it’s affected by things in your environment. I second-guessed my nonbinary gender until I had top surgery, and when my chest was flat I finally lost all doubt. It was like my body was telling my mind that I was a woman when my mind knew the truth, and I had to change my body to stop that signal. This idea that gender is always and consistently tied to one’s anatomy makes things difficult for genderfluid folks - but I know that I am more or less in love with my partners at different times for various (sometimes unknowable) reasons. Some people have never fallen in love. Imagine that every time you were angry as a small child your mother told you that this feeling was called “happy”, how that would mess you up; no one named my gender where I could hear it until I was 25.

So, what can I say?

This has been an extremely long ramble of thoughts that finally came together and connected themselves up this evening. If you’ve got this far, I salute you. o7

@pangodillo

[x]

oh my god

it’s because you’re evil

you can read this article here and it’s despicable and framed as a “declutter your life and get your kids to appreciate the moment~ by busting ~stuff addiction~ story

but the story goes that this mom was on a trip with her daughter and her daughter wanted a toy, and the parents said “no” and then the mom fixates on how her daughter couldn’t enjoy the ~amazing things~ they saw on their shitty family trip because she wanted to get that toy so bad.

so in retribution the mom on a cleaning spree took away not one, but every single toy her daughter had

and then began crowing about the amazing benefits that on the next trip the daughter didn’t ask for a single thing! and was quiet and manageable and shut up and “enjoyed” the moment and everything her parents wanted her to! amazing a child’s “addiction” to toys was cured!

toys are the only thing a kid owns. they are the only thing they have control over. When your kid goes to disney world or whatever with you, they are not in control even if they wanted to go. They did not choose to go to disney world. they can’t leave if they wanted to. they can’t pick how they get there, or where they go when they arrive.what may seem like “enjoying the moment” to an adult is actually “made to be a prop as a kid and dragged around when they didn’t choose to be, or to even go in the first place.”

this is not to say you can’t go someplace with your kid without it being miserable. I loved, and still love, going to museums with my family, for example. But when I was a kid, I didn’t pick to go or not. I was fortunate I had parents that listened to me and brought me places I enjoyed, rather than just brought me wherever and demanded I “enjoy the moment.” And usually, I got to buy one small thing when we went out, especially if my parents also bought things. It helped me feel like I was part of the trip.

God. I want to bring this lady’s poor kid out to that build-a-dino place and buy them their dino toy. It’s clear they tossed out what the kid actually likes and is interested in for the sake of this “declutter your life~bargain bin nameste~” horsecrap. Now the kid has nothing that’s their own and has been taught that asking for their interests is punished by everything they enjoy being taken away.

And who cares if the kid “forgets” about the toy after the trip? that doesn’t mean they never wanted it or could have done with out it. A kid is a kid, their memories don’t stretch back more than 10 years, a week or a month is a long time to them and an afternoon can change their mind. Disrespecting your kid’s wishes and taking every toy they have (and you gave them!) so they can pay attention to you and your horrible ego trips

like this may be what she says

but what happened was that now that she’s romanticizing that her kids now have fewer boundaries, fewer things to do, ask less of her (and don’t kids always have to ask less and less and less!) and don’t get to enjoy the things their peers might like + talk about.

Your kids have no concept about being more “creative and patient,” lady. Kids just do what they do and don’t have any of this romanticization of their behaviors. Your kids have to be more empathetic, because without catering to their mother or to their peers who might have toys, they don’t have their own lives to retreat to now. And sure, they can play pretend. But like, so did I. And I had toys. And just because I was still playing as a kid didn’t mean I wasn’t miserable or was ~cured~ of having no friends and being bullied. Kids do not play because they are happy or healthy. kids play because that’s all their lives contain and if you take away their toys they HAVE to find a new alternative somehow. Sad kids still play.

 I wonder if she’s purposefully omitting the times that her kids being forced to play entirely in their mother’s territory with no personal boundaries have resulted in destruction of her home. But then again, these are her little angels~ who have become good kids~ when they were corrupted by the horrors of materialism~ are even capable of being miserable anymore.

I loathe this woman. Rescue her kids.

I played pretend for hours and hours and hours and I did it with my toys. I wouldn’t have started writing if I wasn’t able to create characters with them and build worlds out of Lego. My first novel stems back to the characters I created from my toys.

The only reason I never did more creative~ things was because they involved my parents getting out newspaper and paints, or saving me cardboard boxes, and even when I did my most creative project as a kid was to build my own doll house. Y’know. My own toy.

Toys are designed to stimulate play. Toys are designed to be played with. If a kid builds her own dinosaur she’s building a character and you can bet she’s going to play with it. She’ll introduce it to her other stuffed animals and they’ll come to life and if that isn’t creative I don’t know what is.

In her follow-up article she says “In that moment, I just wanted to completely clear their room of everything.” She says “I hate toys that have a billion pieces”. She says “Seeing the changes in my children was definitely a catalyst for change in myself as well.”

In her article on making her kids tidy their room she is just the same:

She doesn’t give a damn about what her kids want; she talks about herself and her struggle and her self-righteous authoritarianism. And in the tidying article she reveals that her kids are three and six.

Just look at this bedroom.

This is sad.

NOTE: This post was edited since I reblogged it, and the edit included a lot of important points, so I’m re-reblogging it with my original comment to preserve the new version.

I needed to reblog this addition and I’m sorry it’s a super long post now but it’s so important. I played pretend with my toys all the time because that’s… what you use toys for? My mom saw this post and felt sorry for the kids, told me that she bets those kids now furtively play with rocks, rags, and household items wary their mom will take them away, too or say those things aren’t for playing.

The thing I told her and I’ll add on here too is that when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have parents that let me pick my own toys. Chances are, this mom didn’t actually get her kid toys that appealed to her kid’s interest. Like how many barbies did her mom give her that now the mom complains her kid never can “focus” on playing with? And now she wants a dinosaur toy that she picked out for herself and that’s too much? it sounds like the mom is more angry at all the stuff she threw at her kid (or that her kid was coerced into getting) wasn’t being “appreciated” in a way that gratified her, so she destroyed it all

like in the end this mom is self-congratulatory that her kids now behave in the way she wants for her control freak minimalist neat and tidy showroom-floor aesthetic how terrible is that?

This is how you get your child to 1. Never trust you again 2. Develop anxiety in asking you for anything, ever I am so sick of these ~modern~ parents who shove their beliefs down their kids’ throats when the kids have 0 idea what’s going on. They probably thought they were being punished. If I had a kid tell me her mom threw away all her toys, I’d have a shitton to say to her mother and there’d be some choice words along with pulling up links on emotional abuse. What a fucking demon of a mother.

This infuriates me because it’s not actually about her kids being able to go out and “enjoy the moment.” The kids aren’t enjoying the moment any more than they normally would. This is all about her getting to have the vacation experience she wanted. That’s it. That’s all she fucking wanted. And she wanted her kids to be extraordinarily self-sufficient at a far too early age. Mental stimulation is key for kids and taking away stuff to interact with is a terrible thing to do. It also doesn’t allow them to learn to how to clean or organize anything since there’s nothing to organize.

Frankly, they’re probably going to be far more obsessed with stuff now than they were before. I know for certain that I was most obsessed with the things my family couldn’t afford to give me (namely, video game consoles and cable tv) and would forgo everything else to hungrily devour whatever thing I was rarely exposed to that I wanted. Whereas, with other things, such as candy, my parents got my sister and I candy maybe once every other week. Not too often. But if we asked for a candy (and we always asked when shopping, of course) and they said no, we maybe pouted for a moment and quickly moved on because candy wasn’t this huge fucking deal for us.

God this makes me angry.

THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT POOR GIRL WHO WANTED BANGS AND HER MOTHER PUNISHED HER BY SHAVING HER WHOLE FUCKING HEAD

I HATE THIS WOMAN

She didn’t break a “toy addiction”. She broke a part of her child’s spirit.  Amazing how obedient children are when you’ve beaten a part of their soul into submission, isn’t it?

Someone close to me had her teddy bear taken away by her mother when she was 4 or 5 because she was “too old for teddy bears now.” This person told that story… … when she was in her late 40s. Just… think about that. She remembers, 40+ years later, what her mother SAID TO HER when she TOOK AWAY HER TEDDY BEAR. Now. I’ve taken away my kid’s stuff as punishment – taking away Young Sir’s computer for not doing his chores/schoolwork/etc. is one of the few effective ways of enforcing ‘leisure time on your computer is a privilege that we pay for, if you don’t complete your obligations you will not be able to have that leisure time,’ and we’ve cleaned out stuff he doesn’t play with anymore or that’s broken, but we have done the latter in positive interactions with him. “You know that we clear out your clothes when you outgrow them; toys are the same way. Let’s clear out your toys and figure out what’s broken & what you’ve outgrown, and you can set aside one or two you’d like to keep for sentimental value, and then we’re going to be donating the rest.” Now… man… this kid had a TON of cluttery toys. But. On. His. Own. He outgrew his ‘need’ for ‘omg so much stuff.’ Because we didn’t push him on it and because we made clearing up clutter a positive thing, and we talked to him about the fact that experiences are cooler than stuff. How hard is that?

My family was super poor.  Like, super poor.  And one of the consequences of being super poor is putting all your stuff in storage units when you have to move to a smaller apartment, and naively thinking your mother is paying the bill, when really she’s praying she can get your stuff back before they change the locks.

She lost this gamble.  More than once.

I have three–three–stuffed toys I have managed to hold onto since childhood, and I treasure them above pearls.  I spent years and hundreds of dollars rebuilding my My Little Pony collection.  My sisters are broken in similar ways.

Kids remember what they lose, because those are the things that once mattered more than the world.

God, this is terrible. Like, I understand having too much stuff to keep track of. Holy crap, do I ever understand. So I understand doing a massive declutter of toys. But periodic smaller ones would have been better. And she did all of it because her kid wouldn’t stop doing what kids do, which is ask for toys. Instead of involving her children in the decision-making process, she just … took everything away? If you read the updates and everything, the kids still HAVE toys, but many of them are stored AWAY from the kids, and they are cycled through. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea. But she still did it as a punishment. And that’s going to affect how these kids relate to their parents, to material possessions, to adults in general. Sorry not sorry, this was a terrible and extreme way of doing something that could have been unilaterally beneficial to the whole family. I just … the implementation on this was so fucking unacceptable. Then again, maybe I’m coming from a perspective of “My mother was kind of a terrible person sometimes and toys were basically my only retreat from her bullshit, so if she’d taken them away from me I would probably have turned out INCREDIBLY fucked up instead of merely fucked up but surprisingly okay.” Ugh, this is so disturbing.

I got some messages in regards to my post, but the user asked me to publish them anonymously, so here they are:

Hello there and thank you for you asks! You’re not annoying me at all, I enjoy discussion, especially when it’s engaging and polite :)

Please don’t take any of this harshly; I do get quite passionate, but I’m not angry with you, just entering into a discussion. But fair warning - this is gonna be long, so it’s under the cut.

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