[My main Tumblr can be found over at myasphyxiatedmind]
If you want your ask replied to privately, just put '****' before you start typing.
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
“Don’t let anybody tell you not to be angry. We have every right to be angry. We have every reason to be angry. And we ARE angry. And the reason that we’re angry — the reason we are angry — is because this is OUR country, and they took our government and imprisoned our queen — right here she was imprisoned in her palace. And they banned our language. And then they forcibly made us a state of the racist, colonialist United States of colonial America. Do you have a right to be angry? Of course you do. Of course you do!”
Speech by the Native Hawaiian Leader Haunani-Kay Trask for the 1993 Centennial Commemoration of the American overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom at ‘Iolani Palace, Honolulu
I thought this experience I had recently might interest you guys! I think it’s an exercise a lot of artists could benefit from.
CC: Thank you so fucking much for submitting this. Seriously.
Yes at that bottom line. When will white people learn they are the global minority in the realist sense of the world and the world don’t revolve around them. This exercise is super interesting as well cause I’m not an artist but wow, mentally what that takes is so interesting.
I’ve never seen this put so well before.
I’m really fucking sick of “both sides are the same” arguments/excuses where one side is clearly extreme and the other is more middle of the road or “default”.
YES. THIS. BRB PUTTING THIS ON MY WALL.
And just as a final thought before I go to bed: We need to start asking why our history is obscured.
Imagine a world where children did sit in classrooms and they learned that Columbus was a murderer.
Why not? By that same age they’ve already internalized the tropes of cowboys vs Indians (do kids even play that anymore?)
I actually tried to break down to my sister, in the most kid friendly way (leaving out the words rape and genocide) that Columbus was a bad man who killed all the people who lived in Haiti before our family lived there.
She asks: Then why does he have a day?
And that’s really all it is. You pull out one pin and the whole system comes tumbling down.
The western mode of history is so built around men and the importance of these men that we’re taught never to question the ethics of their actions or even the validity of their individual narratives.
The men that history is built around need to have their ghosts excised before the the truth of things can be understood.
(Source: youngbadmangone)
The crossroads of blackness and Color
The crossroads of Color and Fatness are complex. In both states of being he people living them are dehumanized. If you are a person of color you aretold that you ar wrong and less valid and valuable.
For example women and men of color are objectified and told our dark skin is too erotic. Too sexual. We are turned into a fetish and robbed of our innocence and told we should be glad for this vile grasping exotic fertilization. We should be honored that we are considered attractive and “Sexual objects” by “real people.” No A black woman in lingerie is no more erotic that a white woman. A black woman is not inherently sexual and a white woman is not inherently innocent. We are tol that we because we are people of color are not deserving of love respect representation and humanity. We are delicate, genteel, emotional, serious, we are human.
Men and women of size of different ends of the fat spectrum are told that our bodies are wrong, unhealthy, offensive, and disgusting. We are dehumanized and our health needs are ignored by medical professionals who chalk every problem we have to our fat. Fat men and women are likewise told to be thankful for any sexual or romantic attention even if it is violent. We are told that because we are fat we are not deserving of respect and love humanity or innocence.
And this intersection becomes clear to me as I see more and more of the same language used to dehumanize both fat and non-white bodies. Both fat people and people of color are hypersexualized and sexually invalidated by this language. Black women and men and fat women and men are not capable of restraint and controlling their appetites. They are too lazy to rein in their bodies and lose their fat and resist the advances of people they are not attracted to. NO! This is not true. Black women are women we are perfectly capable of controlling our desires and appetites but we should not have to to make you comfortable. Black men are men and perfectly capable of controlling their natural desires and instincts but they should not have to to make you comfortable. Fat women are women and should not have to deny themselves for your comfort. Fat men are men and are perfectly capable of handling the human dignity thin people are and should not have to deny themselves for your comfort.
”One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?’ These are questions that must be asked.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I HATE SOCIAL JUSTICE BLOGGERS!”
Said the white man, sitting behind his computer, furiously tagging every post with n****r and ch*nk, Gy*sy and wetb*ck.
“I’m not racist,” he assured himself, before asserting that the entire reason that white people might have any privilege is because they worked hard for it. “After all, shouldn’t you monkeys be grateful we civilized you?”
“I’m not racist,” he assured himself, as he skimmed posts without reading thoroughly, alarmed at how uppity these colored people had gotten, before telling them that they needed to stop being racist against white people. Damn n****rs.
“I’m not racist!” he shouted, “I just want white characters to be played by white actors! What harm is there in making the entire cast white?!”
“I’m not racist…” he murmured, snuggling down into his confederate flag pajamas, for the night, and hoping that tomorrow, the colored people wouldn’t be quite so uppity, so that he might assert how beautiful pictures of slavery were.
Straight person: *flaunts* sexuality (no one cares)
Cis person: *flaunts* gender (no one cares)
Queer person: *flaunts* sexuality and/or gender
Straight people: OMG YOU FUCKING SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE STOP DEMANDING ATTENTION UGH
What does birth control do to a person’s body to make them not get pregnant?
Someone asked us:
Question: What does birth control do to a
girl’sperson’s body to makeherthem not get pregnant?Anybody else ever get the feeling that hormonal birth control (like the pill) is nothing less than pharmacy-dispensed magic? You take a pill every day, and voila: you don’t get pregnant. I totally remember feeling like that when I first used it. And while that was kind of cool, understanding the specifics of how birth control pills work made me feel more confident about using it and more aware of what was up with my body.
So how does hormonal birth control work? Different methods work in slightly different ways, but the basic gist is the same: hormones in the pill (or the shot, the ring, the patch, or any other kind of hormonal birth control) keep a
woman’sperson’s ovaries from releasing eggs — ovulation. No egg = no pregnancy. The hormones can also prevent pregnancy by thickening the cervical mucus, which can block sperm and keep it from joining with an egg.More of a visual learner? We absolutely love this animated graphic from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.
Some kinds of hormonal birth control — including the ring, the patch, and most pills —use a combination of the hormones estrogen and progestin. Others use just progestin. A health care provider can talk with you about your body and your life, to help you figure out what kind of hormonal birth control might work best for you.
-Alex at PPFA
