[My main Tumblr can be found over at myasphyxiatedmind]
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My name is: Michelle, but most people call me Dark online.
My gender-pronouns are: They/them/their.
I am: 26 years old, a feminist, liberal, an atheist, an omnivore, and an ISFJ.
The Feminist: Intersectional, body positive, pro-choice, and sex positive.
My privileged identities include: Female assigned at birth (trans* privilege), white, able-bodied, allistic (?), dyadic, monogamous.
My non-privileged/oppressed identities include: Gender-fluid, fat, gray-a, neuroatypical, and gay.
I have: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder.
I like: Pets & animals, animal welfare, pet care & pet care education, ~*SCIENCE!*~, anatomy & physiology, roleplaying, anime/manga, computer & video games, rock & metal music.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
An estimated 10,000 activists flooded the streets of Dublin on Nov. 17, 2012 to protest Ireland’s stringent abortion policies. The predominantly Catholic country has a total ban on all abortion services, with a narrow exception in cases where a pregnancy may threaten a woman’s life. But the recent death of Savita Halappanavar — the 31-year-old Indian woman who died of blood poisoning after an Irish hospital refused to terminate her pregnancy — highlights the fact that women in Ireland struggle to access reproductive health services even when their lives may be at stake. Halappanavar’s tragic story is quickly becoming an international controversy, prompting the Irish government to promise to reexamine its abortion policy.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets today with signs and banners bearing Halappanavar’s image, vowing that the tragic events of her death will “never again” happen in their country (all images via Broadsheet)
(Source: sansastone)
Students and their supporters throughout the Canadian province of Quebec are celebrating the ousting of Liberal Premier Jean Charest, the withdrawal of Bill 78 and most importantly the freeze in tuition fees. This victory comes after six months of student strike involving more than 190 000 students.
Quebec students who already paid the lowest tuition fees across North America were faced with a 75% tuition fee increase. Even if the planned increase had gone ahead, Quebec students still would have pay less than in any other Canadian province. Why? Quebec students have a strong tradition of fighting for free education since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. And if you fight you can win!
During the six month –long strike many the demonstrations held on the 22nd of each month reached up to 500 000 protesters. However, it was the roughly180 local unions organised in CLASSE which carried the fight from day to day shutting down the Port of Montreal, ministerial meetings and nearly all classes in post-secondary education across the province.
In the face of state repression, the use of tear gas, shock grenades, the arrest of thousands of protesters, and riot police in college corridors, students didn’t buckle but instead called upon workers and the neighbourhoods to join in nightly pots and pans protests, the casseroles. Charest’s unpopular Bill 78 acted as a catalyist for the student movement to turn into a popular movement.
Tumblr vegans are intense. Holy god, calm yourselves down, everybody.
It gives me such issue! Because, the ideas behind veganism are solid, there is exploitative factory farming of animals which has not just an impact on a moral level, but is environmentally damaging and creates product of dubious quality (i.e. pumping animals full of antibiotics and growth hormones).
Exploitative farming happens across the board though, and it’s almost as much an anti-capitalist issue and should be explored as that, with veganism being framed more within the inference of personal belief.
Militant veganism as it were does very little to address the actual problem at hand of animal exploitation. Framed within a capitalism system, it becomes a flawed “vote with your dollar” argument if addressed as a means of activism — that by not eating meat, you’ll discourage the production of meat. There’s no social impetus towards that though, and even in converting others to veganism/vegetarianism, you’re going to have wide swaths of the majority who simply won’t change, in addition to those who are disabled or have gastrointestinal disorders who simply cannot eat a vegetarian/vegan diet and remain healthy.
There will always be people who will eat meat out of personal choice, or who need to eat meat out of dietary requirement. That doesn’t mean that we can’t lessen the exploitation or suffering of animals, but most of that suffering doesn’t come at the hands of a fellow tumblr user who just happens to enjoy bacon, it comes at the hands of the conglomerates who are more than willing to push the commodification of meats and animal products to such a massive scale and attempt to shape cultural tastes as well.
It’s absurd the degree to which people will shame essentially powerless individuals for their actions instead of trying to address the overarching culprit. The best vegan causes are animal industry regulations and forced humane standards. Don’t try to dismantle the meat industry with faux-populism and nebulous activism — ally yourself with the communists, socialists, democratic-socialists, anarchists, or even left-leaning neoliberals who have the same issues with the effects of meat commodification that you do.
Also, y’all need to stop with the flawed dichotomies of “oh, you wouldn’t eat a disabled person, so you shouldn’t eat an animal!” or “factory farming is slavery!” or “the mass slaughter of chickens is like the holocaust!” because no, no, wow, no. False equivocancies that only serve to demean other people and generally do little to affirmatively help your cause in a manner that other approaches would still. You don’t need to be racist or ableist to try and convince somebody to limit or end their meat intake, and honestly, that racism or ableism is probably just swaying more people away from the cause. You can’t meet a cause with hate.
Holy shit this is perfection. Bolded for emphasis.
This. Militant veganism is full of classism, racism, ableism, fat-shaming and a whole ton of other problematic shit.
Something militant vegans who think everyone can go vegan seem to miss:
- Some people with gastrointestinal disorders cannot live on a vegan diet and remain healthy.
- Not everyone can afford a vegan lifestyle. Food deserts exist whether you want to believe they do or not.
- Not everyone is able enough, mentally or physically, to prepare vegan meals.
- Some people who have struggled with ED find it triggering to attempt a vegan lifestyle.
And that’s not to mention the fat-shaming idea that if you’d just go vegan, you wouldn’t be fat. Because obviously all vegans are thin, right?
Or the racism inherent in comparing factory farming to slavery.
Militan vegans need to shut the fuck up. They aren’t helping anything or anyone, human or animal.
Twin Cities Pride flashmob for marriage equality
Brave men “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes”
Over 100 turn out for event to draw awareness to violence against women
Men wearing high heel shoes paraded through downtown Cherokee on Thursday, April 5. No, it wasn’t a drag show, and none of them lost a bet. The brave men donned the shoes, as part of a “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event which drew over 100 people, to help bring awareness to the problem of violence against women.
“Thank you for manning up and walking with us,” said Painttown Rep. Terri Henry, a long-time advocate against domestic violence. She spoke to the crowd about the importance of awareness and education on the problem as well as the need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
“From its initial passed in 1994 to now, the VAWA has been the vehicle to bring awareness of the epidemic rates of violence committed against Native women to the U.S. Congress and it has been the vehicle for tribes getting the federal legal reforms and resources needed to address domestic and sexual violence,” said Rep. Henry. “Native women face more than twice the rates of violence than women of other races in the United States. 34 percent of Native women will be raped in their lifetime and 39 percent will suffer domestic or intimate partner violence.”
“These are the shoes we will walk in today. The 2012 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act contains amendments to federal law that would restore limited jurisdiction to Tribes over all persons committing domestic and sexual violence. It is time for tribes to have local control over criminal activity in our tribal areas. The Eastern Band stands ready for this jurisdictional restoration.”
Tom Hill, of Analenisgi, said it is important for men to take responsibility for the problem. “We are responsible for this problem and we are the ones that have to take care of it.”
He said many ask the question of why does an abused woman not leave or why do some women continue to return to their abusers. “How come we don’t ask, ‘why does he keep hitting her?’”
Principal Chief Michell Hicks donned high heels and led the walk. “I do applaud the staff (EBCI Domestic Violence) for putting this event together. We have got to be more supportive and more understanding on this issue.”
View 54 photos from this event at: http://theonefeather.com/photo-galleries-2/
I love things like this, other than the sadly-prevalent “I am man enough to walk a mile in her shoes”.
Also, it’s not really that “brave”, the men doing this probably got far less stick than the average woman walking home at night.
No idea who she is, but I liked her sign.
“Which 1/2 has more rights?” Slutwalk Victims’ Rights Protest - Imgur
from reddit
Three monuments vandalized for Trayvon Martin, Justin Sipp, & Wendell Allen — Bay Area, CA
Communique:
“Last night three racist monuments were attacked: Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, and the White League statue. The monuments were graffitied, respectively, with “For Trayvon Martin,” “For Justin Sipp,” and “For Wendell Allen” and splashed with paint. We mourn these young mens’ deaths and strike out in retaliation against the system that brought them about. The system that celebrates slave owners and racist lynch mobs is the same system that exonerates killer cops and racist vigilantes. We want memorials to these fallen innocent youths, not to slave owners and racist mobs.”
http://anarchistnews.org/content/3-monuments-vandalized-justin-sipp-wendell-allen-and-trayvon-martin
FUCK YES
badass
