grrlyman:

irongall:

the fuck is this imperialist crowdsurfing

The imagery in this scene hearkens back to every Victorian cartoon depicting mother Britannia taking care of unruly babies of color labeled India, Jamaica, etc.  I understand that conquering is part of the story in A Song of Ice and Fire and these people are grateful for their freedom, but the visual of a thousand brown arms reaching for their white savior “mother” is extremely problematic.

This image is sickening, and emblematic of every movie dealing with race created by White America.

murderous-mermaid:

racial fetishization is racism.

it is not a compliment.

stop pretending that you are ~appreciating the culture~, and being respectful.

reducing the many varied people within a culture to the parts that you think are cute is not being appreciative. racism is not respectful. 

stop.

xlivvielockex:

Joss Whedon quoting Junot Diaz (“If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”) makes me see red with anger. How clueless and full of yourself do you have to be to say that and not see that YOU DO THE SAME EXACT THING?

Here is a man talking about how women at 51% of the population yet he continuously colonizes and erases Latinos from his work set in counties in CA with Latinos approaching majority population numbers. He erases Asians COMPLETELY in Firefly and instead uses their language and culture to the benefit of white folks. He casts white folks for asian characters. Stop White Washing has an article on how Whedon white washed Maria Hill (I did a google search that puts her ethnicity as undetermined but not white).

And let’s not even start on LGBT representation. Sure Willow/Tara was great but in Whedon’s world, the only queers are lesbians. Gay men are used as props and jokes. Buffy’s potential bisexuality seemed almost a prop to sell comics and titillate a male audience.  Speaking of comics, pick up his writing on Runaways for some really messed up transmisogyny. 

He needs to quit patting himself on the back because he put TWO of the hundreds of female Marvel chars in The Avengers. Yeah, he is great at advancing the cause of white women (and even then his rape fetish is disturbing). But what about the rest of the world, the majority of the world, he is making into monsters? 

setbabiesonfire:

mia-the-wonder-slut:

cakeandrevolution:

pubhealth:

Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

For 75 years, Finland’s expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It’s like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates.

It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it’s designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they’re from, an equal start in life.

The maternity package - a gift from the government - is available to all expectant mothers.

It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.

With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby’s first bed. Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box’s four cardboard walls.

Mothers have a choice between taking the box, or a cash grant, currently set at 140 euros, but 95% opt for the box as it’s worth much more.

The tradition dates back to 1938. To begin with, the scheme was only available to families on low incomes, but that changed in 1949.

(From BBC)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22751415

Socialism at work.

I would rather my tax money pay for this than drone missiles.

$534 Billion F-35 fighter jet > hundreds of schools closing.

I wish my government was spending money for things like this instead.

walpurgisnuit:

anonymous said:

Can you please explain to me how wearing a hijab is liberating? I am trying to understand how something that is forced upon only women, can be feminist? Why does Islam only promote women covering up their hair, and why are they seen as impure without it? Why can’t men be responsible for their urges, they’re capable of controlling themselves and we should hold them responsible for their actions.

so i think i would have been nice about this (maybe) if you had not come in with a slew of assumptions:

• that muslim women are forced to wear hijab
• that muslim women are seen as impure without hijab
• that islam thinks men can’t control their urges
• that the hijab has anything to do with men
• that i am obligated to explain jack shit to you (this of course, being the most egregious of them all)

if you had done any research in places that are actually informed about islam you would know that

• the hijab is an act of worship. the same way that prayer is an act of worship. the same way that hajj and fasting and charity are acts of worship.
• the hijab is not a protection against the male gaze. men are, in fact, according to the quran and hadith, required to lower their gazes away from women. whether these women are covering or not is not relevant. and if you in fact knew anything ever you would know that there are men that fetishize and objectify women in hijab. my wearing the hijab does not protect me from jack shit. it’s me choosing to submit to Allah the same way a nun who wears a habit submits to Christ.
• men are responsible for their urges. there are codified punishments for rapists. there are religious rulings on who men are allowed to look at. the expectation in the religion is that men control their own dicks.anyone who tells you different is a fucking liar.

the hijab is feminist because its my fucking choice. i get to choose how i want to dress my body, and this god damned western progressive ideology that in order to be liberated my skin has to show for you is so fucking problematic and enraging that i just??? my hijab is a feminist act because its an act of resistance and rebellion. im fucking up your gender expectations, shielding myself from your male gaze, refusing to be commodified by you

and that shit makes you uncomfortable

the fact that you came here and worded your ask the way you did means thatyou dont actually want to learn — you think that every muslim woman that makes a choice not to be dressed in a way that makes you comfortable is unfeminist. you think i have to be western to be feminist. well let me fucking tell you i am not going to strut myself for you so you can feel comfortable. im not going to take off my hijab so you can pat me on the back and say ‘wow you’re one of us now!!!’ 

my hijab is a huge fuck you to establishment

so

fuck

you

sinidentidades:

I’m really confused why people think colonization just stops presenting problems when the colonizers leave or are driven out. Never mind that they wreck cultures, rob people of their languages, disorient people’s identities, pillage the land’s resources, and outright kill anyone who would dare stand in their way. 

Clearly, it would be really simple to recover from that. Clearly. 

afternoonsnoozebutton:

Part of the issue I have reading scifi is so much of it is “a wandering band of white men set out to colonize space” and it’s just like reading a history book except there are asteroids. 

zuky:

thesmithian:

…[some] may not remember what made Iran-Contra such an extraordinary scandal. The Reagan administration “raised money privately” by selling weapons to a sworn enemy of the United States. Why? Because it wanted to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. And when I say “illegal war,” I mean that quite literally—Congress told the Reagan administration, in no uncertain terms, that Reagan could not send money to the Contras. Period. The Reagan administration, unrestrained by laws and the Constitution, did so anyway, and much of the president’s national security team ended up under indictment.

more.

Reagan knew everything. However, I bet this Time magazine piece doesn’t get into the juiciest part of Iran-Contra, which is that in the 1980s the CIA put into operation a crack cocaine pipeline to import narcotics from Central and South America and distribute it in US inner cities. This is not a “conspiracy theory”, this is a documented conspiracy, most rigorously researched and reported by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gary Webb, whose series in the San Jose Mercury News and subsequent book “Dark Alliance” literally got him killed. To me, that’s the story of Iran-Contra: not that Reagan sold weapons to Iran, but that the US government imported and sold crack to Black America, as part of an arms and drugs trade which funded war in the Third World and which devastated lives and filled prisons in the USA.

sulinars:

Alabama city destroying ancient Indian mound for Sam’s Club

This is complete bullshit on SO many levels.

1) It belongs to someone else

2) It’s sacred to that someone

3) It’s against the fucking LAW

4) Wrong, just fucking wrong…I have no more words

Please boost

garconniere:

lionza:

the disparity of internet attention between shitty comments made by a&f’s ceo and the garment factory disaster in bangladesh. human deaths in the context of extreme exploitation - less shocking, less rousing. 

thank you thank you thank you for saying this. i’ve been feeling like an angry curmudgeon about this over the past week, yelling at my computer screen. here’s an angry (franglais) comment i left on a friend’s post about the “shocking” statement made by the company’s ceo, which is being covered around the world:

FYI Je m’excuse mais je trouve ça surprenant que les gens ne savent pas déjà a quelle point cette companie n’aime rien qui n’est pas blanc, skinny, hétéro, préférablement “Homme.” En plus, they have sold awfully sexist racist t-shirts (whose slurs I won’t repeat) for decades, and issued unapologetic press releases in response to organizations that call them out for it. (2005) They have produced and sold shirts for girls (not women, girls) with slogans like “Who needs brains when you have these?” referring to breasts they do not yet even have. They have had numerous successful lawsuits (2003) proving everything from the fact that they only hired men for managing positions, and discriminated against African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and women at nearly every level of their hiring practices. And what a surprise, they discriminate against people with disabilities as well (2009). Those are just SOME of the reasons why I don’t understand how people still shop there. (Oh yeah, and they even sued Beyoncé if that’s not enough)

other facts that have boggled my mind:

• the statement by a&f’s ceo that has gotten people so up in arms in early may, 2013? was made in 2006.
  
• people are talking about this ad nauseum in canada/quebec. there are no abercrombie & fitch stores IN THIS ENTIRE PROVINCE.
  
• the internet’s response? let’s put the clothes on the least cool people we can think of… homeless people! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU.
  

i seriously wonder, are we at a point where we really believe “plus-size” clothing is/should be accessible to everyone, by every brand, that a statement like his - which if you actually read it, is more about “cool” kids/class privilege than it is necessarily about shaming fat people - is beyond shocking and merits this much outcry? where was your outcry when the company was using racist hiring practices? selling racist and sexist products? why do you give a shit what some old rich white guy says about your body? and from where i stand, why the fuck do you care about a company that doesn’t even sell shit where you live? 

why does it get so much traction when just last month, 1,127 workers die (and countless others seriously injured) in a garment factory collapse? when nearly every major brand, sold in every part of the world, uses garment labour from that part of the world?

it simply reminds me of flavia dozan’s words:

“Here’s the problem I have with this neoliberal feminism: they have traded an in depth geopolitical and social analysis involving gender and the position of women in the West in relation to women everywhere else for the promotion of consumer empowerment dressed up as “choice” and career advancement. “Here, improve your chances at success by wearing the garments of your choice!” or “Here, see the latest fashion trends and pretty outfits! Wear this to succeed in your office job”, promoting this aspirational, mind numbingly decontextualized consumerism. The role models of this neoliberalism parading their manuals to better lean in and “having it all” chants as the only kind of gender analysis we are afforded. As women, we should aspire to rule the corporations that caused this death toll; as consumers, we should aspire to close the wage gap that prevents us from buying more “stuff”, with nary a word about how that “stuff” is produced, by whom and under which conditions. And when faced with over a thousand deaths, this neoliberal feminism will induce us to some form of rightful indignation (OMG all these people died! OMG this is terrible! ad infinitum) while obscuring the root causes of this death toll.”

is it easier for people to vilify a brand that doesn’t even market their clothing to you than it is to step back and see the impact of a globalized market? to look at the textile factories that closed down in the 80s and 90s as brands decided paying their workers the least amount of money possible for their work led to the creation of this system? that your demand for the most amount of clothing for the least amount of money may have led to this system?

get your fucking priorities straight.