no one ever says that Rome needed help from aliens to build their empire
#l laughed for days when i found out that #ancient egyptians used water to reduce friction and move blocks for distances #and that this was literally DEPICTED ON THEIR HIEROGLYPHICS #but ~western archaeologists~ #thought that the pouring of water depicted ~superstitious rituals~ #jfc
As an archeology major, I can vouch for this being absolutely true:
Any time we see something we don’t understand, we mark it down as ritual purposes. It’s actually a catch-all euphemism for “We have absolutely no clue what these people were doing here yet so until we work it out we’ll pretend it was something to do with their religion.”
And yeah, sometimes it is a white people thing. When white people went into Canada the natives introduced them to the delights of maple syrup. The white people asked “Well, how did you ever work out this sap was edible and delicious.”
The native people responded, “Oh, well, Squirrel showed us.”
White people: Hahahaha They’re off on that totem animal spirit guide thing again.
It wasn’t until this century that scientists actually observed squirrels in that area cutting holes in sugar maples, waiting for the sap to crystallize, and eating it.
The native people were actually being literal and the white people thought they were being metaphorical. Sigh.
Tumblrs dismissal of marriage equality is so dangerous and embarrassing
Pretending it only benefits rich white dudes is ridiculous and hurts poor brown women like me along w them
OCD has affected my life in such profoundly shitty ways and then I go on Facebook and see it being treated as a joke. Sigh.
Yes!!! Someone said it! My friends always show random pictures of these kind of things and look at my reaction. it’s down right cruel these things and absolutely not funny!
This is disgusting. I hope she’s okay. They really don’t give a fuck about us out here y’all. Stay woke.
here is a video of here speaking about her arrest and a link to the article above (x)
[Transcription of the video: My name is Sadaisha Shimmers. On the 21st of April I requested to meet with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Ellen Degeneres show. Within 24 hours of requesting to speak with her about the 20 transgender deaths in our country, the lack of military inclusion, and the segregation that is being lobbied for jails as well as bathrooms in our country, I was leaving my place of residence when I was thrown on the ground by two male officers. I had no idea what was going on and I was subsequently held and detained in down-town San Francisco jail for 24 hours. During which time I was strip searched one time by six male officers and a second time by another male officer by another male officer. They also changed my legally changed gender from female back to male. While I was incarcerated they refused to feed me stating that I was a vegetarian and that they were unable to process a vegetarian tray within the first twelve hours.
During my incarceration I was not charged with anything. There was no crime attached to why I was being held in jail. These officers came out after I had called 911 saying that there had been people harassing me as a transgender female and I was in fear for my life. They said they were unable to come out to respond to my call and that I needed to go in. After getting dressed to go in and make a police report I was leaving my house when the officers grabbed me, threw me on the ground and arrested me.
This is illegal. It is illegal to hold somebody without any formal charges. It is illegal to strip search a female when you are a male officer. And it is certainly illegal to deprive me of the medical care that I required. During my incarceration for that 24 hour period I was deprived of various central medications to my health, which resulted in a 24 hour hospital stay due to bleeding ulcers in my stomach. This is a violation of my civil rights. I am in fear for my safety and I fear retaliation. Is this what happens in our country when we ask our future president to help us out?
This is our trans nation. I need each and every trans person to not allow this to continue to happen. Share this video. God bless.]
Another thing I’ve seen happen thanks to the ~extreme male brain~ nonsense is that people think that queer autistic men can’t possibly exist because people incorrectly believe that being gay means being feminine and is therefore the result of a “female brain.” “Well your brain is super masculine, and being gay would make you feminine, so you can’t have both!!!”
I can’t speak for DMAB trans folk, but I’d be willing to bet the same thing happens to them.
yes, and it’s additionally used to deny trans care to autistic trans women & autistic transfeminine people.
Writing posts or tags about female characters being flawless and wonderfully and how they take no shit and all that, that’s good, that’s important, but at some point we have to produce fanwork about them. Like fic or meta or fanart or fanmixes or prompts or comments on stuff about them or rec lists or ANYTHING, because I’m not here to tell you how to do fandom (I say in a post where I’m telling you how to do fandom) but there’s just this gap that’s happening between the “yay ladies!” rhetoric that happens across fandoms (we’re not even gonna address the “boo ladies!” factions, we’ll have to save their souls in a different post) and the amount fic/meta/graphics produced for them.
And also the kinds of works produced for them—I’d rather have works centering on Pepper’s kidnaping and forcible injection of Extremis than another gifset of her fresh from the flames, not because I want to romanticize her pain or devalue her strength but because I’m wary of romanticizing her strength and devaluing her pain. Pain is how we connect to characters. Their suffering and their mistakes are what make them dynamic, and interacting with the difficulties of these characters’ lives is what creates a vibrant fandom. It’s like when suffragettes were agitating for votes and men were like, “but it would corrupt women to enter politics! You’re too flawless and pure to be tainted by the outside world!” And the ladies were out there marching and screaming, “Sometimes we want fucked up h/c about Natasha too!” Or something like that.
Supporting female chapters for being awesome and flawless queens something I’m so here for, especially for the kinds of women that fandom is so quick to demonize, but I’m not about this pedestal.
Some things I’ve learned in the CBT clinics I’ve been going to regarding anxiety that I thought might be helpful to some.
I need to show that panic disorder one to a lot of people wow
THIS THIS THIS THIS
I’ve never seen a post about social anxiety which includes the bit about being REALLY outgoing in order to mask imperfections, which is EXACTLY what I do. This is a really great overview of the different anxieties and phobias.
me around other gays and non-homophobic straight people: actually I think gay marriage is simply a band-aid solution and an empty gesture. Our real focus as a community ought to be homeless and depressed gay youth, especially trans youth.
me around homophobes:
The whole reason marriage equality gained traction was because the AIDS epidemic hit and people’s lovers were prohibited from visiting them in the hospital and were denied access to their estates and were removed from their wills and were having children that they coparented taken away from them. Homeless and depressed gay and trans youth are incredibly important and housing and employment and medical equality – these are all important. But calling gay marriage a band-aid solution and an empty gesture is not only incorrect in a hundred thousand different ways legally, but it’s disrespectful to the entire reason that marriage equality exists which was meant to protect vulnerable members of our community whose partners had died or who were dying themselves.
also like…I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: marriage equality is intimately connected to things like housing (married couples often have an easier time renting than singles!), medical equality (aformentioned issues with people getting to visit their spouses in the hospital etc), child custody, immigration issues, class status, etc etc. Marriage isn’t a “band-aid solution” it’s a step towards equality and better material conditions in many areas of life, some of which can mean life or death to vulnerable LGBT people. The idea that marriage equality is inconsequential to the lives of the most marginalized members of the LGBT community is so clueless I often don’t know how to respond to it. It’s also hard for me not to read this “gay marriage is only for super privileged upper-class people who are removed from the real struggles of marginalized LGBT people” as a direct erasure of/attack on my family, personally.
(i also like the way the rhetoric on this site just calmly segregates off trans gay couples & queer couples of colour all “ONLY WHITE CISGAYS WILL BENEFIT” like you do know that is not how equalising laws works and being able to visit your spouse in hospital is one of those universal needs?)
Yes, honestly – marriage equality is most important for the middle/lower class and the marginalized, because it’s a cheap way to get all the traditional rights of legal partnership (hospital visitation, social security, health insurance, etc.). The rich are the ones who don’t need marriage equality, because they can hire a lawyer to draw up legal documents giving themselves most of the rights, and can afford to make most of the rest irrelevant.
I happen to be in a closed poly triad. We would love to get legally married, but it would be window dressing – we have money, we’ve already ensured that we have most of the legal rights of marriage in place for ourselves. It’s the people without the money and knowledge to do so who need the easy option of marriage.
particularly when this is addressed, we need to examine how this first and foremost affects disabled trans and/or people of color, who are already suffocated by such toxic laws from the axes of gender and/or race, only to be further harmed by institutionalized ableism
