2010-01-05 15:12 | Quote of the last August.
Open discussion of disability and the like is generally wonderful. Mandatory cultural educator status for every disabled person not so much.
–Tapetum, 2008-08-05, here.
This absolutely goes for any topic.
Tags: 
2009-09-06 21:18 | Today's kickass quote, via karnythia@LJ.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
– Letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr.
2009-03-24 11:48 | "I was only kidding, baby! / Why don't you just put down that gun?"
I've recently come to the realization that one of the tools an abuser used against me (and everyone in his vicinity) was saying "un-PC" and offensive shit all the damn time, claiming it was "just a joke" or that he "just liked to get people riled up over (so-called) nothing." This is ultimately a control game. It's called: I'm Going To Keep You On The Defensive/Reactive At All Times, While I Get To Play Offensive/Active And Have A Real Laugh At Your Expense.
2009-03-20 15:44 | "Aaaaa yes yes yes!" quote of the $timeunit.
It goes with the rule book that if women were a certain way, asked nicely, behaved according to certain rules, they would have success…so there is no discrimination, just justified discrimination for women who didn't know how to behave.
-not a dudetiful wife, here.
A perfect little synopsis. I love it. This applies to so many other -isms, as well, naturally.
2009-02-10 15:44 | Scraping sharpened metal on my legs… funtime!
Now I will wait for the hundreds of concerned comments that explain to me patiently, as if I am a slow learner, that if I have any sort of skin problems after shaving off perfectly normal hair from a perfectly healthy body part that doesn't need to have the hair removed from it, I am obviously doing it wrong and if I just use X product that cost X amount of dollars and was invented just for this purpose, and if I do X time consuming beauty ritual before I do the totally unnecessary shaving thing, then I won't have those annoying problems! Most of the time. Although it seems to me the most efficient and cost effective way to avoid having those problems is to, you know – not do it.
- Amananta, commenting in Use it or lose it: humanity vs porn over at I Blame The Patriarchy.
I do still shave my legs. I have tried just not shaving them, but I die in a pool of anxiety once there's the chance I'll be engaging in clothing-optional activities with anyone. Where "anyone" includes people who have explicitly stated that they don't care, explicitly stated that they prefer I don't (stubble suck, you know), or don't shave themselves.
I kind of wish I could get over that more. While I do like the feeling of smooth legs, (a) that only lasts for the better part of a day, and then the suck settles in, and (b) I actually also like the feeling of not having shaved for ages. It's kind of pleasant. And, yeah, saves time, water, and bandaid money.
2008-02-03 02:25 | Oo, good one.
"…we as girls should not lead a guy to believe that he is going to get more then we are willing to give."
This statement assumes that the choices we make (in clothing, behavior, etc.) are transparent and signal the same thing to everyone, women and men. They don't. Men might perceive they're being "led on" when women have no intention of sleeping with them. We might want to investigate why men are ultimately the ones who decide what certain "signals" mean.
written by Jessica, February 01, 2008
2007-12-31 09:11 | PC.
Whenever someone says "stop being so PC," I change it in my head to "stop being so respectful," and then they sound like a douchebag. Mind you, most of my friends *are* respectful, so it doesn't come up much.
Eve
2007-12-14 00:08 | I had too many tabs open.
It's links o'clock again.
* The Just World Theory: "According to the hypothesis, people have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve."
* brownfemipower writes on domestic violence in movies: "What would happen if we decided that there were no 'winners' (those who do the culturally acceptable thing and do what we all hope *we* would do in a similar situation) or 'losers' (those who still love the person who is abusing them, or chose to stay for whatever reason, or are killed before they can escape)-just people who have the right to live and love and grow and change?"
* Shauna writes on learned helplessness and political apathy. As I'm squarely in the camp of largely depressedly apathetic, this post hit me hard, and I plan to let this sit in the mental crockpot for a while.
* In an LJ thread, hotcoffeems makes an awesome statement: "I get irked by this notion that there is a tiny amount of compassion available to us as humans, and therefore it must only be meted out in tiny dribbles to those some tiny-minded individual arbitrarily decides is "deserving enough." I don't care if someone "made their bed", they shouldn't be abandoned to it when things go horribly south."
* In a post about mix-and-match minorities, Katie comments on something interesting – being part of the LGBTI community and being deaf. And now I want to go be That Person who transcribes YouTube posts. Goodness.
2007-11-14 11:13 | I love this Bonnie person, and I don't even know her!
This here is the best rant I've read in ages. At Alas, A Blog, Bonnie takes down Robert's stupid comparing-GLBTQ-to-pedophilia nonsense, and lo, it is beautiful.
2007-10-16 16:05 | Caek.
Novelist Sheri S. Tepper once had an elder sister protagonist who explained the difference between rape and sex to a younger brother who had been hanging around with sniggering teens propagating the "they all want it really" view. In it she pointed out that liking chocolate cake is not the same thing as liking to have chocolate cake shoved down your throat with a stick no matter how much you say no, or resist, or are in danger of choking and the cake just keeps on getting shoved down your mouth; and that it's made infinitely worse if people dismiss your complaints with "oh, but it can't have been that bad: you love chocolate cake!".
Let's not forget about those days when really, you just kind of don't want cake right now.
2007-10-11 08:49 | The best "feminist card" comment ever.
This is, by far, the best comment I've ever seen that had to do with "If I don't do [xyz], am I no longer a feminist?":
While I'm all for fighting this on principle, do I have to turn in my feminist card if I want to choose my battles?
The goal of posts like this is consciousness raising; let's look at the sexist subtext of these things so many people for granted. That doesn't mean if you choose to do those things you are Cast Out of the Feminist Circle for All Eternity. It's not about maintaining ideological purity, it's about analyzing the attitudes underlying this sort of thing. We all compromise with the patriarchy just to survive, so if that's one of the compromises you feel like you have to make, so be it. Just acknowledge that it's a compromise. So many people feel attacked when things like this are analyzed through a feminist lens, but it's absolutely necessary to do it in order to show the omnipresent patriarchal attitudes. This isn't about judging the individual people living their lives, but challenging the meaning of traditions that demean women and treat us as possessions without autonomy.
2007-09-24 19:49 | Fantastic.
Earth to scared white guys: women and minorities are already perfectly aware that they're being oppressed. The fact that you were clueless about it until you saw the movie and finally realize that they might have a reason to be pissed off at you doesn't mean that they were as clueless as you. Dumbass.
- mnemosyne
"You're the best because you're the only" is such a brilliant and simple idea that I wonder why wingnuts and other powerful incompetents don't use it more often. You could be your parents' favorite child if you killed all your siblings. You could be the valedictorian of your high school class if you could stop everyone else from going to school.
- junk science
2007-09-18 23:15 | Reason #1 why I love my old ratty skirt with pockets
Today's pile of awesome is all in this paragraph:
And do you know what? If you're going to leave a comment that all those tiers would make you look OMG FAT!!!!, please don't bother. There is more to life than the bogus imperative to minimize your apparent body weight at all times. Just for a minute, put down that burden, okay? Think about how that gorgeous fabric would FEEL. Think about how it would SOUND. Think about how you would MOVE in it, where you would GO in it, what you would put in the POCKETS, even, and not on some imagined optical illusion of a few more inches here or there. Now imagine feeling like that all the time — imagine the question "Does this make me look fat?" didn't exist. How would that change your life? What would you do differently? Would it get you to wear this beautiful dress?
For some reason, I hear those last three lines spoken in the voice of the female lead from Chocolat.
2007-08-29 10:06 | Another "Oh!" moment.
"the other good way i've seen it stated is that it pretty much doesn't matter what you are doing or wearing or drinking, only whether the people you're with are rapists or not."
- roula
This is an "Oh!" moment because once it's phrased like that, the question that immediately springs to my mind is, "How can I tell whether [men in any particular area] are rapists?" And there's no good answer to that. Since most rapes are in fact performed by intimates (friends, family, partners, &c), there's almost entirely no answer to that. And it shortcuts many attempts at victim-blaming, or at least I'd hope so.
(Note: these are my "two two-hours-of-sleep sessions" thoughts. It's possible I should be way more cynical.)
2007-08-22 23:26 | I typoed that as 'Pandagod'.
Pam at Pandagon posted about Kevin McCullough, who ranted about gays and marriage and dragons…
…dragons?
The post is good. The comments are spectacular. Observe ye a sample, by karpad:
[Lesbians are] missing out on dragon slaying, is what.
But I think they have some kind of proto-magical super virginity or something, so they get to ride around on unicorns.If we legalize gay marriage, lesbians will be required to defend their spouses against dragons AND still get unicorns. They can ride into battle on their unicorns, with flowing, brightly colored clothing with their magic swords with their awesome, awesome battlecry of MAGIC FUCK YEAH! WOOOOOOO!
And since all lesbians would have wives, both partners get both a unicorn AND a dragon. That just isn't fair. and the overhunting might extinguish the dragon population.
Eventually, there will only be one dragon left, it'll be soul-bound to some snotty evil prince, and then Dennis Quaid would have to kill Sean Connery.
Is that what you bitches want? Dennis Quaid killing Sexy Old Sean? and a species of beautiful, inspiring animals going extinct? That's why I'm against gay marriage.
Best Logic Evar(tm). Go read the rest.
2007-04-28 14:07 | Quotes and links and…
* At I Blame The Patriarchy, Twisty pens some notes on the revolution:
Do you guys get, I mean actually get, that our society is a patriarchy?
* There's a post over at Bitch Ph.D. from August 2005 (hey, I'm catching up) about misogyny in real life. The post is good; the comments are better. I'm about 30 comments in, and this quote hit my ah-ha!-o-meter:
It's using a male default as the standard and then because (well, duh) women are different from that standard, we are found lacking.
- Sarah In Chicago
* What's fun is combining the two with the question: How many anecdotes, how much data, will it take before it stops being a whole lot of women just having really bad luck? I ask you.
