not everyone deserves your friendship. not everyone will mirror your kindness nor your understanding and whether or not you are willing to accept that is your decision ALWAYS. you do not need to keep being friends just because you’ve known someone X amount of time – you do not owe anyone a place in your life.
This was such an important line to me. They never once used Angela as a black stereotype but they didn’t try to erase her identity as a black woman either. Nor did they make her being the black girl the only thing about her. She was quirky, wrote poetry, colored her hair and she cried. She was in equal measures strong and vulnerable. She was desired, full of insecurity and confidence. The only time any of the usual stereotypical TV troops about black women were brought into play they were used in a satirical way to make fun of how little the characters around her knew about being a Woc because they weren’t Woc and even then there was no hostility or alienation on either parts. Angela was a complex black girl, with complex relationships and a realistic personality/sense of identity and her character was just really important to me.
Once I worked as an intern in the state capital. One of the representatives I worked for was this middle-aged guy. And he hated the tampon and napkin machines in the women’s bathrooms. Hated them. He insisted that they weren’t necessary.
I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.
He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.
“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”
His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”
I thought, You have got to be kidding.
Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.
And that’s how, at twenty, I had to give a talk on menstruation to a middle-aged married state representative who was one of my bosses. American politics, ladies and gentlemen.
its tuesday, ive had a glass of wine, and honestly Aurora Knew what the fuck she was doin when she pricked her finger on that spindle man. she was TIRED. she was fully done dude. She was 16 YEARS OLD!!!! if i had the chance to sleep for a hundred years when i was 16 you know id take my chances
Refugee Housing: A New Life for Empty Prisons in the Netherlands | Via
Associated Press photographer Muhammed Muheisen has documented many of the men, women, and children displaced by unrest in the Middle East, and followed them as they made their way toward Europe. He often found himself wondering “What happens to migrants once they reach Europe?”, and heard about a program in the Netherlands where the government had started housing refugees in vacant prisons. Years of declining crime rates have left the Dutch government searching for ways to put its emptying prisons to good use, and as an influx of refugees reached the Netherlands, the former prisons have temporarily become their homes. Muheisen spent months trying to gain access to the prisons, then, once he was allowed in, he spent another 40 days visiting and photographing asylum seekers from dozens of countries inside these prisons, as they wait to find out what comes next for them.
all i’m saying is if an all-girls school crashed on the island in lord of the flies then they would’ve been off the island in a week
lord of the flies doesnt show the base human condition, it shows the base privileged straight white male condition, incredibly when i point this out people get kind of annoyed
Might I direct you to Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, a YA novel in which a plane full of teen beauty pageant contestants crashes on a deserted island. Instead of descending into violent savagery, the girls are able to work together and become more truly themselves than they could in the patriarchal world outside. They repurpose the tools of beauty into tools of survival (and some of them work to keep up their appearances too, because that’s what makes them feel happy, while others decide they’re done with all the pressure to be a certain sort of beautiful.) They fight against evil corporations. Beauty Queens is enthusiastically feminist. (Never fear, the feminism is intersectional, exploring issues of race and sexuality as well as gender.) Also, this book is HILARIOUS, not to mention surprisingly exciting!
Oh, look at this thing I’m going to add to my reading list.
srsly read Beauty Queens, one of the girls is trans!!!
