[Video description:

TikTok user @/nad watches a TikTok of someone making Christmas cookies. They speak rapidly, gesticulating, and say:

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again! I am Muslim and I am brown and I do not celebrate Christmas, but I would give anything in the world to experience what it’s like to be a white person during Christmas. White people during Christmas are like artists during the Renaissance. Something happens internally, and y’all just become the most creative, most intelligent, most smart, amazing human beings. The way the- this- this- this- wow. Wow.

/end video description]

[ID: A 2018 Tweet from @/proletariatitty that has been edited to read:

Ideologically, I don’t agree with white people, but they kind of went off with Christmas aesthetics.

/end ID]

there is no such thing as unskilled labour

I’ll keep saying it.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UNSKILLED LABOR.

THERE IS ONLY UNDERVALUED LABOR.

“You see, no labor is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages.”

— Dr Martin Luther King Jr. “The Other America” 1968

All power to the working class 🚩

All power to the people 🚩

Yeah so the Big Think is literally owned by big oil. They’re making shit up so people feel too exhausted to fight for any change. Ignore this kind of environmental nihilism, all it does it help the rich avoid change.

The fuck

This explains so much!

Well, that’s just great!

my brain when somebody tells me to ‘try harder’

This is why creating an environment of acceptance for people with ADHD and other learning disabilities is paramount. It’s not only the basically humane thing to do, it also actively helps them achieve the goal you’ve set for them. 

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad).  Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. 

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.  

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

They died of AIDS because

Picture from 1993:

We lost basically a whole generation of the queer community.

As a current AIDS survivor, this is really important information. I was diagnosed not only HIV positive in 2014, but I had already progressed to an AIDS diagnosis. Knowing how far we’ve come with treatment and what the trials and tribulations of those who came before cannot and must not ever be forgotten. Awareness is the number one goal. I often speak to the microbiology students at my university to explain what it’s like to live with, how the medications work, side effects, how it’s affected my daily life, and just raise general awareness.

Before my diagnosis, I, like many others, was clueless to how far treatment has come. I was still under the belief my diagnosis was a death sentence. Moving forward, even if only one person hears my story, that’s one more person that’s educated and can raise awareness.

I believe it’s time for us as a society to start better education of this disease. The vast majority of the people I’ve spoken to are receptive to the knowledge of my status, and I’ve received lots of support from loved ones, friends, and total strangers. It’s time to beat the stigma.

This is slightly off-point, but as for the cost, I wanted to mention that some pharmacies have specialties that let them get special coupons/programs and stuff to save money.

A bottle of Truvada (a month supply commonly used for treating this) is at least $3,000 out of pocket and insurance doesn’t usually take a lot off of that. But the pharmacy I work at is an HIV specialty and we always get te price down to less than $10.

If you’re on HIV meds and they’re ludicrously expensive, ask your local pharmacy manager if there are any local HIV specialty pharmacies that they know of. They might be able to help.

I think it’s important to emphasize that, while the diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, it is also true that people dying of AIDS because of homophobia is not history only.

My brother’s first boyfriend was kicked out/disowned by his parents for being queer, got AIDS, couldn’t afford treatment, and died.  He died in 2019, at around 20 years old.

In 2019.

Barely more than a kid.

Of a treatable disease.

Because of homophobia.

Because his parents cared more about not being associated with a queer person than they cared about their son’s literal life.

AIDS is not just history.  Neither is homophobia.

Back to history: When AIDS patients held die-ins, they went to hospitals, lay down in front of them, and literally waited to die.

If you’re young & either queer or queer-adjacent, think about the number of people out of the closet you know your own age & think about how many you know your parents age. They’re not stamping us out of the mould any quicker these days than in the ‘60s, except in lockstep with population growth. I think, growing up, my picture of relative numbers of queer people & straights was unavoidably impacted by the number of empty seats at our table. That might be the case for you too. The number of elders you never got to meet.

Remember this when people talk about how small the LGBTQIA+ population is. That it’s “such a small percentage of the population to be catered too”. Remember this and tell them, “that’s because homophobia killed them”.

This picture of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is often included with the “The men facing the camera/in white are the surviving members” but it leaves out something extremely important:

By 1996, all of the men facing the camera in the picture were dead.

Every.

Single.

One.

Eric Luse, the photographer, said this in a more recent article :

By 1996 the obituary list was almost 50 names longer than the entire choral roster. All of the positions plus four dozen more, gone. The obituary list continued to grow, too. The cost and availability of any treatments in the mid-late 90s continued to cause more death.

If you were queer in the 80s and 90s, you knew someone who had it and knew people who died from it. Period. I cannot stress the impact this had on the queer community and those of us who were alive at the time, and I know the scope of it is almost unimaginable to younger people today.

By 1996, there were NO surviving original members of the SFGMC. You need to know that when you see this picture.

Dozens of the men turned away from the camera here in this shot were also dead alongside the men in white. It is vital to recognize that.

There is no hope in this picture, it isn’t a display of a lucky few who avoided death. There is no “Well at least some of them survived” because no, they didn’t, and this time was so fucking bleak and painful it’s astonishing that anything got done. They’d march one week and die the next. Their friends would bury them in the morning and march in the afternoon. This went on for years.

Bigotry and hate and ignorance killed generations of queer people. It speaks to the sheer resilience of the community that from that all but state-sanctioned genocide, we have gained so much ground in the last few decades. Much is owed to the people who refused to stay quiet and who fought even on their deathbeds, so please consider learning about LGBTQ+ history as a way of continuing the fight and showing respect. Many of us coming of age at that time didn’t have that opportunity, and made it a point to learn and get involved as teenagers and young adults because we saw what we were losing.

Sing for two.

friends to enemies to lovers is actually something that can be so intimate. i know you i know everything about you i have told you all my deepest secrets and you have told me yours and now i am trying to kill you literally or metaphorically because hate and love are separated by a very thin line and i don't know which side i am on

Let us not forget the greatest real-life bard of all time.

Reblogging this because people need to know about the original Badass Bisexual

She did that. She was also so extra she had to be pardoned by the King of France… twice. -The first time it was because of the aforementioned “breaking and entering a convent to flee with a novice while also putting a dead nun in her bed [that she had previously dug up from the nearby cemetery] and setting fire to the convent just in case”. -The second time it was because she went to a Royal Ball and spent so much time flirting with a high society girl so overtly that three of her suitors challenged her to a duel. She fought the three of them at once and then went back in to continue flirting with the girl. She apparently hadn’t considered the small fact that duels were outlawed, and that maybe having three duels on the Royal Palace gardens wasn’t the best idea ever? Luckily for her Louis XIV found her hilarious and he pardoned her a second time. -She also gained her living for a while by doing ‘singing and dueling demonstrations’. As in dueling and singing mocking songs about the guys she was dueling at the same time. - Apparently, during her time at the Opera, she challenged to duels all the nobles who tried to molest the chorus girls. When she realized they went around saying “they had been mugged by a gang” to cover for the fact that they had been crushed by an opera singer, she started taking small objects from them and returning them in front of everyone, “you forgot this when I beat you up” style. - When the woman she loved the most in her life died, she apparently retired from public life… to a convent. She died at 33 (37 according to other sources).

If you want more details about Julie d’Aubigny, aka Madame de Maupin, and you speak Spanish, there is this twitter thread that gives all the information above and more. Warning, though, it uses quite a lot of slang.

hey whites liking posts about racism is less than useless either reblog them and actually help uplift voices of color or just don't bother lol. yes this includes this post because i know i'm not the only bipoc who is sick of the performativity

i have thousands of followers. i get hundreds of notes an hour on the stupidest bullshit possible. you have no idea how frustrating it is to be ignored only when i'm trying to make life easier for myself and other poc. it's so miserable and it's the most common feeling in the world on here for us and it's not gonna change unless YOU step up and do something about it

Elizabeth Sweetheart, “The Green Lady” Kitten Kay Sera, “The Pink Lady” Ella London, “The Yellow Lady” Sandra Ramos, “The Purple Lady” Zorica Rebernik, “The Red Lady”

In addition to being “the purple lady”, Sandra is also the founder of the very first domestic violence shelter in america, and still operates 5 of them with very little help. she recently lost a sizable chunk of state funding for refusing to kick women out after 30 days. consider donating to strengthen our sisters to help sandra help the women of new jersey! 

https://www.gofundme.com/f/domestic-violencehomeless-shelter

https://www.strengthenoursisters.org/

How Big Oil lied about "recyclable" plastics

Exxon knew.

They knew, 50 years ago, that they were going to murder the planet and our species with their oil.

And they acted.

Oh, how they acted!

They created a campaign of lies to distort the public perception of climate change.

https://exxonknew.org/

Exxon knew.

They knew in ‘73, when their researchers told them: plastics would never be recycled. There would not be a cost effective way to recycle plastic.

And they acted.

They created a disinformation campaign to convince us plastic COULD be recycled.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

That campaign - the little recycling logos on our plastics, the upbeat videos about a future where plastic was part of a circular economy of use and recycling - convinced us to buy, wash, and sort plastic.

90% of that plastic was never recycled. It never will be.

NONE of those splashy campaigns - the announcement that all NYC school plastics would be recycled, the recycling in national parks - ever worked. They all lasted long enough to get some upbeat press, and then they quietly shut down.

This week’s NPR/Planet Money investigation by Laura Sullivan doesn’t just talk to the ex-chief lobbyists, now serving as belated Oppenheimers, lamenting the impending destruction of our planet.

It also talks to the current round of executives who have announced a fresh round of plans to recycle plastics - completely disingenuous, insultingly obvious distraction tactics to convince us that their projections of TRIPLING production by 2050 isn’t a form of mass murder.

Then Sullivan circles back to those retired executives, the ones who oversaw the first disinformation campaign, and they confirm that this latest round of promises are literally the same tactic, barely updated for a world on fire.

The world is on fire. My sky has been orange all week. Our family’s socially distanced meetings with friends in parks or back yards have been cancelled because we cannot breathe outside.

Exxon - and Chevron, and the rest of Big Oil - knows.

In a secret recording released to the New York Times, oil execs meet to cheerfully discuss how they will burn the world and murder us all but make a buck in the process.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/climate/methane-natural-gas-flaring.html

Their plans for climate change don’t involve reducing emissions - they’re building bunkers and hiring mercenaries to keep us at bay when we come for them. They know what they’ve done.

Exxon knows.

Exxon knows.

When I searched for the “Exxon Knew” campaign to find a link for this piece, the top of Google’s search results included a blisteringly expensive ad for a disinformation site, paid for by Exxon.

The sky is orange. The oceans are choking. The air is unbreathable. Your body is full of microplastics.

Exxon.

Fucking.

Knows.

“young adult dystopian novels are so unrealistic lmao like they always have some random teenage girl rising up to inspire the world to make change.”

a hero emerges 

And just like in the novels, grown men and women are going out of their way to destroy her. Support our hero.

And it’s not even like it doesn’t happen regularly.  

Teenage girls are amazing.

Sometimes they’re not even teenagers

Reblog every time a girl is discredited/ignored

Who they are:

Emma Gonzalez

Malala Yousafzai

Ruby Bridges

Greta Thunberg

Mari Copeny

Autumn Peltier

Afreen Khan

Sophie Cruz

Charlottesville Black Students Union

Naomi Wadler

DAPL protestors (names not found)

Ahed Tamimi

This isn’t a coincidence. Revolutions almost always happen when the population of a country is at its youngest and that’s a lot more true nowadays with social media.

Claudette Colvin was actually the first one to refuse her seat in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger. The movement chose to promote Rosa Parks as the figure for that form of protest because Claudette was a pregnant 15-year-old girl.

Barbara Rose Johns was a 16-year-old who organized a student strike protesting segregated schools. This strike, after gaining support of the NAACP, became a lawsuit that turned into Brown vs. The Board of Education and resulted in the desegregation of U.S schools nationally.

7th-grader Mary Beth Tinker, disturbed by the Vietnam War, decided to wear an arm band with a peace sign on it in protest. Her school suspended her. Her family filed a suit, Tinker vs. Des Moines, which reached the Supreme Court and ruled in her favor, ensuring that students and teachers maintain their right to free speech while in school.

Freddie & Truus Oversteegen were sisters who joined a Dutch resistance movement in WWII in their teens. They lured, ambushed, and assassinated Nazis and Dutch collaborators. They also blew up a railway line, transported Jewish refugees to new hiding places, and worked in an emergency hospital. 

Our history books may like to showcase male figures, but behind every movement is a young girl ready to make a change. It was true then, it’s true now, and future generations of teenage girls will go on to inspire progress, whether they’re credited or not.

We were raised on these stories of fighting back against oppression, but then the people who wrote them or read them to us act shocked we turned out ready to fight facism even while being anti-social.

My heart is so heavy today.

WE ARE LITERALLY COMMITTING GENOCIDE! RIGHT NOW!

We are living in the precursor to a nazi American Holocaust

Trump is getting ready for a full blown coup if he doesn’t win in November. He said on Jeanine pierro 3 days ago that if there are riots (what the right has called the protests wether they are peaceful or not) after he wins he would “Put them down very quickly. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want”

I am so far beyond done with you if you still support this man. If you still try to “put politics aside” and stay friends with people who are now supporting GENOCIDE!! Who have continued to support racism, homophobia, and direct violence to American citizens who love this country enough to try and change it.

I have lost any and all traces of hope for our country as it stands. Our institutions must be changed. Our government must be broken down, re-evaluated by people smarter than me, and rebuilt with a focus on empathy and societal well being instead of just military power and monetary gain.

If I wasn’t radicalized before I am now and If you care about anyone besides yourself, any gay or trans person, any person of color, it’s past time for you to be too

Reblogging because I had a dream in which this came in vitally handy.

im so pissed i needed this 3 years ago in physics for the egg drop contest i googled for hours and you simply put it on my dash now… after my EGG has LONG SINCE smashed against the gymnasium floor………..

trans men are men

trans women are women

nonbinary people are c̸͔̙̥̳̀̿̐͊̆̔̕ơ̴̧̯̱͚͕̺̯̟̯̓͑́̽̐͗́̊m̷̯̰̠̯̦̙̎̔̃̊͆i̴̬̭͈̗͆͗̈́̐̈́̂̎̈́͘n̷̬̾̋̒͛͆͋̍̒͘g̸̫͙͎̖̺̟̹̟̋̂̇̄̚ ̷̨̧̻͔͔͇̟͉͓̑͌f̶̰̲͕̰͚͙̠͌͋ơ̵͙̠̹̈̂̀̈́̏̚ͅŕ̸̯̓ͅ ̴̱̣́̌̔̔̃͝y̸̱̿͋̈́͌͆̓̈́̚̚ǫ̵̨̮̖͓̯̐̈̾̔̈̉̔ù̵̱̱͉͇̙̈́͊͐͛́̈́͘r̷̛͍̣͖̥͈̣̝͕͒̊͜ ̶̡̗̣͕͕̯̝͆̓́͆̍̈́̿̈́͜͜͜͠k̸̝̲̬̰͚̦̀͜ņ̶̻͇͊̋̆́̚ȇ̶̟̯͚̰͎̹̲͈̎̃͌͂̐̆̿̀͝ȩ̶̮̈̾̈́̈̎̔̋̚͠c̷̤̹̰̥̥̳̤̪̿̿͐͛̈̌͑̉͘͠ă̶̡̡͖̜̂͝ͅp̶̦̔ş̷̢̬͈͉͇̞͍̪̿̔̿̑̈