32 women show us how to respond to common rape excuses

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preach.

"I find it funny how for years my history classes told me the Disney story of Pocahontas is completely false"

then I decide to do some research on Poca for funsies

only to find that Disney did not just totally pull that love story out of their asses

it’s a theory that’s accuracy has been debated on since John Smith died

so guys

the movie could actually be accurate

And also my history teachers lied to me

again

it’s not a theory really, and not many people have debated it.   John Smith most likely falsified/exaggerated the story to make himself look better because no one else ever supported his statements- Pocahontas was only a very young girl (approx. age 12) when she met Smith (approx. age 27) and he did not begin telling the story until many months after the saving scene supposedly “happened.”   It is possible/probable she did at first assist the english when they were starving, but there has never been any mention of a love story between the two (only mention- by him- of her preventing him from being executed). 

Pocahontas married Kokoum at age 15 (in real life, yeah, that happened), a marriage that probably ended when she was captured by the english.   Her later marriage to Rolfe (who met her after she was captured) has been theorized to have been “one condition of her release from captivity.”

Keep going to class, the movie is completely inaccurate!

Mentally ill people are not the problem. Inaccessible, unaffordable health care is the problem. Stigma is the problem. Lack of treatment is a problem. Lack of understanding is the problem. Lack of compassion is the problem. Not taking people seriously is the problem. Lack of honest conversation and open dialogue is a problem. Using jails as a housing facility for mentally ill persons is a problem. Do you understand me? Mentally ill people are not the problem.

source 1; source 2; source 3; source 4; source 5

WELP.

Stop what you are doing.

Read those.

Right now.

I’ll wait.

If you don’t want to read, I’ll explain the key bullet points, but please read them afterwords:

This is not “we didn’t protect him enough.”

This is not “the government screwed up some random detail or accidentally let his killer loose.”

The 111th Military Intelligence had a team taking pictures of his balcony during the assassination.

They brought in a Special Forces 8-Man Sniper Team from the 20th.

Memphis Police withdrew their regular protection detail from him.

A jury of 12 people, six black and six white, found the United States Government guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

YOUR GOVERNMENT. MY GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE, SHOT AND KILLED DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING. And the media never reported the case.

MLK was ASSASSINATED. By a government YOU PAY FOR.

I hate those posts where someone tries to pressure you into reblogging. I almost never ask you to reblog.

This shit is important.

Reblog this. I don’t care what kind of blog you have. I don’t care what you normally talk about.

Reblog this.

holy shit

this is always on reblog

The problem with most of those sources is that they refer to each other. BUT, I do find this believable simply because it’s on the King Center’s web site, and they do provide an actual transcript of the trial.

This is fucked up.

Imagine a Muslim Witch

Her parents are severely alarmed at her first incident of accidental magic, when she’s a baby and summons the apple slice right out of her distracted mother’s hand. They read Quran over her and throughout the house to ward against djinn, but the accidental magic continues, so the write ayat-ul qursi and put it in a locket for her to wear to protect her from the evil eye and sihr.

Nothing stops, and since she doesn’t act possessed, they decide its just a miracle from God, makes sure she reads Quran and does her prayers, and make dua, and she grows up well-adjusted and slightly worried about this ability of her. Her parents make sure she doesn’t get a big head and think she’s a saint or something.

Then she turns 11, and McGonagall comes to tell them about Hogwarts. The parents are skeptical and demand some kind of proof that this woman isn’t about to spirit their daughter away. McGonagall is taken aback that the issue for these Muggles isn’t the magic so much as the ‘invisible boarding school we can’t tell is safe or not’. 

So she gathers other Muggle parents to testify that their daughter is going to a real and proper school, and that’s that, she’s off to Hogwarts. She gets sorted into Ravenclaw (but almost into Slytherin for all that ambition she has). 

Through the years, though, things she never considered comes up. Like how she’s basically a vegetarian at Hogwarts in her first year cause the house-elves don’t know about halaal meat, or how everyone looks at her funnily when in Third Year she gets special permission from Dumbledore to break from classes for prayer (and she learns to be quiet for Fajr when her roommates complain).

Or how Madame Pomfrey gets worried about her fasting in Ramadan, and the house-elves are insulted when she won’t eat their food until she explains, and then stuff her full of food half an hour before Fajr and at Maghrib.

Or that she takes to healing the muggle way because not all those potions have ingredients that she can ingest, and she talks to a sheikh for advice on if salamanders and bat eyes are actually halaal. 

And then its a struggle to be the only hijabi in the school, and she makes friends with the Baron so he stops Peeves from trying to pull it off all the time.

And how annoying it is when the only holidays that get celebrated are Christian ones, and that’s when she makes friends with Anthony Goldstein, who agrees that there should be more religious diversity so he can really enjoy Hannukah at school. 

She gets in trouble for saying her spells in Arabic, to the consternation of all her professors who don’t understand the language and insist that its dangerous if they can’t govern her spell-casting.

So she starts a duelling club, and Padma joins her and casts spells in Punjabi, and Anthony who does his spells in Hebrew (they’re not making up spells, just changing the language, and isn’t it funny that the spells are always a teensy bit different?), and others trickle in, and new magic gets practiced under the supervision of a Ministry hire who encourages them and speaks sixteen different languages.

Then people claim she’s a frigid freak because she keeps turning down boys who want to date her (even though she really likes them), until she puts the gossipers in the Hospital Wing, and then no one says anything after that.

She worries about the practical non-existence of Muslims in Wizarding Britain, and will that affect the jobs she can get, because wizards and witches are a bit funny about religion?

It’s important to tell girls that they do not need to be sexual in order to be loved and respected. And it’s equally important to tell girls that as human beings they have bodily autonomy and can do whatever they see fit to do with their own person.

If you give one of these messages and not the other then you’re giving the incomplete truth. 

Go Forth and Educate Yourselves!

I’d also highly recommend watching the Jane Elliot Brown-eye/Blue-eye experiments, which can be found here:

Not only should you educate yourself but use this for good. Look around you and help others who don’t have this privilege. Hiring, donating, community service, etc.

After this post went viral, the original artist had to delete their tumblr because they were inundated with death threats.

There were people more offended by this comic than offended by the existence of racial disparities—to the point where they threatened this artist’s life.

but I thought only sjws sent death threats?!

if you close your eyes right before the train hits, your brain will think that you have died. some people find calmness in this.

I always reblog this I just love it so much 

okay listen. A train is coming towards you. You close your eyes. The train stops coming towards you. You haven’t died. Your brain is really freaking relieved that the train is not coming towards you anymore. That’s why you feel calm. Brains aren’t so stupid that they think you’ve died just because everything is black. It might have felt a bit stressed by seeing that there is a large vehicle travelling towards you, because sometimes it can have problems with understanding things outside of you and telling what’s real and what isn’t. But your brain perfectly aware that your heart is still beating and your lungs are still breathing and blood is still travelling around your body. That’s it’s job. You don’t feel calm because you “died”, you feel calm because you’re ALIVE.

Can we stop glorifying suicidal thoughts now please?

No matter what happens, you will always have an ancient part right in the middle of your human brain, somewhere that you have no access to, that wants nothing more than for you to stay alive.

tHANK YOU

i lOVe this rant

Clara Bennathan, Violence, Teenagers, and Gonzo Porn (via nextyearsgirl)

Then article is written by a 17 year old who is really on the ball. It’s short and definitely worth reading the whole thing!

(via snowflakeespecial)

Porn shouldn't be embarrassing or shameful. BUT abusive, demeaning, objectifying, and porn that fetishizes and objectifies people for their identity is the kind of porn that should be (the gonzo porn that this brilliant teen talks about). It must be discussed more so that people understand it's not the porn industry that people should be targeting as a whole but the large dark corners and alleys of porn that make it dangerous for people who aren't white and male. That kind of porn should be made illegal.

Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. That’s DC’s Holy Trinity. That’s the big three for DC. And yet…

What is cultural appropriation, and how to avoid it

I think I’m going to make that previous post into a post that can be reblogged. Again, this is just one person’s opinion about cultural appropriation! Don’t take my words as absolute truth. Ask different people what they think and read different stories.

—-

What is cultural appropriation?

The phrase means literally, “one culture taking parts from another culture”, for example, the idea of pizza spreading from Italian immigrants to become a food that people call “American”. But, it’s not as simple as that.

One reason cultural appropriation can be bad, is that sometimes, it has the power to make people stereotype the original culture, or, make them see a version of it that is mostly invented by people who are not from that culture, and, not actually true. It can cause people to see the other culture as “strange” and “exotic”, because, they only see the other culture through the eyes of the people from their own culture. This usually happens when a very powerful culture takes things from a less powerful culture, and stereotypes them or creates their own idea about them, that erases people’s idea of the original culture.

Another reason it can be bad, is that rituals and history that have a strong meaning to the original culture, can be treated by outsiders as “just for fun”. Then, the ritual or history is treated in a way that is disrespectful and offensive, to someone who has it as a very deep part of their culture.

—-

How to avoid cultural appropriation?

Cultural appropriation damages cultures when a dominant culture takes things from another culture without understanding them, or uses them in ways that are not how they were originally, and replaces the dominant culture’s idea of what the other culture is like. To avoid this:

In the end, treat other cultures like you would want people to treat yours. You don’t have to think “I never can do anything involved with this culture”, but be very careful thinking you know about a culture because you learned a few things. Be respectful and humble, and always willing to learn. Don’t jump in with your ideas, listen more than you speak. Always let the person from that culture speak first.

And if someone says, “those clothes/that word/that kind of food has an important meaning, you can’t just use it for fun”… then, listen and respect that.

This way, you can enjoy learning and moving beyond just the ideas in your own culture, without causing harm! I hope this helps （´・ω・｀）

To anyone who doesn’t think that America’s justice system isn’t corrupt and racist, look no further than these two headlines from this week.

Robert Brockway, http://www.robertbrockway.net/2013/07/18/its-not-a-game-if-you-cant-lose/ (via pelikinesis)

From the 1947 Dorothy L. Sayers essay “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”

oh my god, this is from 1947. doesn’t it show how much things HAVEN’T changed that I read through this whole thing assuming it was from a current article or essay, until I got to the date at the end? (via goodbye-courage)