Aut viam inveniam aut faciam...

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For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as “Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays” rather than “Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,” try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether.

—Mallory Ortberg, on Gawker

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Mallory Ortberg, laying waste to fools on GAWKER, today, regarding CNN’s offensively lovey-dovey coverage of the two high school football stars who were convicted on Sunday of sexually assaulting a blacked-out drunk 16 year old girl from a neighboring town at a party, and then sharing pictures of her on the internet.

More details HERE.

I think it’s reasonable to say that, given the football culture of Steubenville, OH and the notorious difficulty of proving sexual assault even when the victim REMEMBERS WHAT HAPPENED, it is likely that what these jocks did to this other human would have become simply a dark part of Steubenville high school folklore, were it not for the digital trail of photos, tweets, and texts that the bystanders and assaulters themselves put out into the world.

SO THANK YOU, NERDS, FOR INVENTING SOCIAL MEDIA.

And thank you, Mallory and Manhattan snark-media for reminding some people—including CNN, apparently—what personal responsibility actually means.

That is all.

(via areasofmyexpertise)

(via midori-fairy)

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Quotes Rape TW Mallory Ortberg Sexism Misogyny Culture Steubenville

Must Be Seen to Be Believed: Kevin-Prince Boateng Kicks Soccer’s Racism in the Teeth | The Nation →

socialismartnature:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXyqFZ_fghI

Imagine for a moment banana peels raining down on the head of Miami Heat basketball star LeBron James when he takes the court. Picture Vikings running back Adrian Peterson having to hear fans sing songs calling for his death because of the color of his skin. It’s difficult to visualize in US sports* but such scenes have become a normal feature of European soccer. Yet perhaps, in one moment of fury, the page may finally be turning on this ugly state of affairs. In a bracing display of courage, star midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng, of the legendary Italian club, A.C. Milan, displayed all the frustration that’s been building among professional soccer players of color in Europe over the last two decades as they’ve endured and all manner of toxic, racist garbage when they take the pitch.

In the middle of a “friendly match” against the club Pro Patria, a mini-mob in the bleachers repeatedly tossed bigoted bombs at the non-white players on AC Milan’s roster, and Boateng decided he’d had enough. He picked up the ball right in the middle of play and punted it directly into their section of the stands. Boateng then began to walk off the field in protest. Here is where, in a matter of seconds, the turn of events shifted from shock to wonder. As Boateng stormed to the nearest exit, the Pro Patria fans, instead of jeering, cheered him for his actions. Then the referees called off the rest of the game and his opponents on Pro Patria walked off with Boateng, shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity. The announcers could only utter a word in Italian easy to translate: “Incredible.”

Source socialismartnature

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storyboard:

#1 Must Have: A Blog to Celebrate Queer Culture

When A. Slaven was growing up in rural Ohio, she didn’t identify as anything but a weirdo. “There was so little context for being a queer person in the place where I’m from,” she says. “I didn’t even think about it. I just always felt very different.” It was only when she left the sticks for college in a nearby city — and developed her first reciprocated girlcrush — that she realized there was a name for the way she felt: Queer. Suddenly life was less lonely.

Now 33 and living in Seattle, Slaven is a librarian by day and club promoter by night. Along with her creative partner, lawyer/photographer Adrien Leavitt, she’s the brains behind #1 Must Have — a blog (named for the Sleater-Kinney song) and photozine documenting queer culture. For the last year, the two friends have been posting color portraits of the Seattle queer community — sans captions. The point is to show how queer people of all ages live. We caught up with Slaven as she prepared for the project’s New York gallery debut, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

Why start a zine about queer culture?

Part of why we started doing it is that the It Gets Better Project got so popular. We don’t think that you should just suck it up in high school and wait. We wanted to represent taking charge, empowering yourself, not just waiting it out and hoping that some day we can adopt a kid and shop at Whole Foods.

Read More

(via brashblacknonbeliever)

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culture gay it gets better lgbt photography portrait queer seattle social justice storyboard teens trans zine

brown femme grrrl, moon priestess: vasundharaa: Dear White Girlwhen you can be killed at birth for being... →

vasundharaa:

Dear White Girl

when you can be killed at birth for being born with a vagina

when you are harassed and treated like a lesser being for your gender

when you have to walk to school down streets where men outnumber you 10-1 with a constant fear of being molested/raped

when you get eve-teased, groped and cat-called almost every day

when you cannot complain about sexual harassment to your family because that just reaffirms their belief that girls must stay at home instead of going to college

when your aunts constantly draw attention to your dark skin and your frizzy hair, and tell your mother in falsely sympathetic tones that it’ll be hard to find a proposal for you

when the media constantly bombards you with with ads showing the fair girl getting the guy/job, sending you the message that your worth is tied in to your skin color, that you will never be good enough

when the people who systematically oppressed and killed your ancestors now treat your gods like relics of a people who no longer exist

when the people who once treated your religion as something barbaric and primitive now appropriate the gods you revere and worship to get them tattooed on their asses

when you have a father who raises you to speak English and not your native language so that you will not have to suffer the same discrimination that he did for not being able to speak English

when your mother is automatically labelled traditional and backwards for going to a supermarket in a foreign country wearing a sari

when you are killed in a foreign country and your death is labelled as an accident because “that psycho thought she was probably a Muslim ‘cause of her scarf” as if it’s somehow okay to kill a Muslim

when you have to forgo your own culture to fit in because otherwise you’re “papadom” or “the curry girl”

when you have to eat and sleep in a separate room and not touch anything when you’re on your period because you’re considered ‘impure’

when people make fun of your “weird” name

when the media either hypersexualizes you as an exotic sex goddess or portrays you as a desexualized, submissive person with no say in relationships

when you have a grandmother who still has nightmares about hiding down a well for days when the British raided her village and raped the women

and relatives who are still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, war and communal violence

when you have taken all the shit and ugliness that comes with being a girl of Indian skin and Indian blood

when you have taken all that is unglamorous about our lives

then you can share the glamorous

then you can celebrate Holi

then you can rock the Bollywood ‘princess’ look at your Halloween parties

then you can wear a fucking bindi.

Source vasundharaa

Race Culture Cultural Appropriation Feminism

"The idea that men cannot control their sexuality is dehumanizing. Men do not face systematic oppression simply for being men. But our cultural myth that men are always precariously on the edge of raping a woman, or that we cannot expect otherwise is hateful toward men, and something I will never object to being labeled misandry."

http://www.politicalflavors.com/2012/10/30/the-real-misandry-knights-and-knaves/ (via brute-reason)

(via brute-reason)

Source politicalflavors.com

men sexual assault rape sexuality misandry culture

this-is-not-native:

With Halloween just around the corner (yay!!), I figured it was time to bring back this rad campaign from Ohio University.

There are endless cute, sexy, funny, even offensive costumes that don’t perpetuate racist stereotypes. There is really no excuse.

(via lemmefeedyoualeaf)

Source this-is-not-native

Culture Not Costume Cultural Misappropriation

1 + 1 = 2: Why I’m Not Looking for My “Other Half” →

brute-reason:

I was listening to music today when I noticed something odd about the lyrics to many of the songs:

Give me a reason to fall in love

Take my hand and let’s dance

Give me a reason to make me smile

Cause I think I forgot how (Meiko)

Who doesn’t long for someone to hold

Who knows how to love you without being told

Somebody tell me why I’m on my own

If there’s a soulmate for everyone (Natasha Bedingfield)

You got a piece of me, and honestly

My life would suck without you (Kelly Clarkson)

Before you met me, I was a wreck

But things were kinda heavy

You brought me to life

Now every February, you’ll be my valentine (Katy Perry)

Look into your heart pretty baby

Is it aching with some nameless need?

Is there something wrong and you can’t put your finger on it

Right then, roll to me (Del Amitri)

If you pay attention to these songs, it seems that romantic love is something that “saves” you from loneliness and misery. It’s not just in our music that you see this sort of thing, either. Plenty of movies and novels are based on the premise that one or both of the people in the love story are lost and broken until they find each other, and there’s a reason, I suppose, that we talk about “finding our other half.” My parents, too, always told me that once I fell in love I would not be depressed anymore, and used my ongoing depression as “proof” that I didn’t really love my boyfriend.

In a way, this seems like an extension of the rescue trope in our love stories. Typically, it’s a woman being rescued by a man, but you see the story play out the other way around, too, with the woman “rescuing” the man from workaholism, domestic ineptitude, skirt-chasing, substance addiction, emotional numbness, and even, apparently, a propensity for BDSM. All ills, it seems, can be cured by falling in love with the right person.

I used to buy into this myth completely. The fact that I had depression and few genuine friends probably fueled my acceptance of it, as did the fact that in our culture it’s freakin’ everywhere. I told myself, “I can never be happy if I’m single,” and believed that once I was in a stable relationship, I would immediately feel understood and loved–and thus would finally begin to understand and love myself.

Well. I don’t buy this anymore. (I also don’t buy the other extreme, which is that “you must love yourself in order to be loved” or whatever. People with self-esteem issues are capable of having relationships, thank you.) At one point I took stock of my life and realized that I’m single and…happy. I would still like to have a significant other sometime soon, but not because they will make me “complete.” I already am.

I now believe that the fundamental “unit” of humanity is not a couple or a family, but a single person. Nobody can ever be as close to you as you are to yourself, but you can choose to make connections of varying degrees of closeness with others. After all, if we’re all “meant” to be half of a couple, why are many people genuinely happy being single? Why do some people choose to form triads or group marriages? Why do some people find happiness as single parents? Why are some people’s greatest loves their friends, not their spouses?

Now that I’ve realized that I don’t “need” a partner, it’s sometimes difficult to articulate why I nevertheless want one. I don’t need to be “saved” from anything, and I don’t think that a relationship would (or should) change my life in a huge way. Now that I have lots of good friends, I don’t need much emotional support from a partner (or from any one person), and now that I don’t have depression, I don’t need much emotional support anyway.

If you were to imagine relationships as a mathematic equation, the traditional one would be 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 (or, perhaps more paradoxically, 1 + 1 = 1). I like to think of them as 1 + 1 = 2. Two people in a relationship are still two people. They still have (or should have) their own personalities, friends, hobbies, careers, and lives. (In my view, they should have their own last names and bank accounts, too, but I suppose that’s not for everyone.)

They also still have their own problems, because you can’t cure loneliness or depression or insecurity or boredom by adding into the mix another person and all of their own issues. I think a relationship between people who consider themselves whole is by default healthier than one between people who consider themselves fractions.

Filed under: life, psychology, sociology/culture Tagged: culture, dating, love, movies, music, personal, pop culture, psychology, relationships

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Let’s Talk About…Barbies.

blackrosesarebeautiful:

What? Barbies….really?

Yes, friends. Because Barbies do a lot more to our society than we think they do.

The facts:

A child playing with a Barbie can subconsciously think something is wrong with them if they don’t look like a Barbie

When Barbies go from white to black (or anything else), nothing changes but the skin color. All the features stay the same.

When other races are represented in Barbies, they are incredibly exoticized. Think about any Native American Barbies you’ve seen…they’re always in tribal gear, a head dress and are Collector’s Editions. Why? Native American people more often than not dress like everyone else. Yes, their culture is important…but why is that all the Barbie represents. The same goes for Hawaiians, Mexicans, and several other races.

Studies have proved that if a woman actually had the measurements of Barbie, she would not be able to walk and would topple over.

So what’s the problem? Obviously a doll can’t be made to look like EVERY SINGLE child in the world. What’s wrong with one basic model?

The problem is that the model is something impossible for anyone to reach. So why make a model children look up to something they can never be? It’s not healthy for them. Not to mention the things I mentioned earlier about different races.

Barbies are not helping society and the increasing problem of body image and insecurities and racism.

Source blackrosesarebeautiful

feminism Barbies body image dolls children women's studies society racism exoticism native american white black culture insecurity blackrosesarebeautiful

Let’s Stop Asking If This is The End of Men →

“So, as far as the end of men goes, I say no. Let’s stop asking the question that way. Not the end of men, but an end to classic, crippling, strong, silent, head of household protector/provider masculinity. It’s out of step with contemporary life and gender equality. And, to be clear, this isn’t an argument in favor of turning men into women, boys into girls. It’s an argument for finding an equitable way for everyone to be considered genuinely human. Why not ask instead, what does it mean to be human?”

Soraya Chemaly

Source brute-reason

men culture Feminism Womyn Link Story Awesome

Posts tagged "culture"

Must Be Seen to Be Believed: Kevin-Prince Boateng Kicks Soccer’s Racism in the Teeth | The Nation →

#1 Must Have: A Blog to Celebrate Queer Culture

brown femme grrrl, moon priestess: vasundharaa: Dear White Girlwhen you can be killed at birth for being... →

1 + 1 = 2: Why I’m Not Looking for My “Other Half” →

Let’s Talk About…Barbies.

Let’s Stop Asking If This is The End of Men →