- Thank you Chris Rock for pointing out Hollywood’s racism
- because nobody else was going to do it
grammyawardwinnerandrewrannells:
well maybe if violence against women weren’t hidden in the lyrics of every other top 40 song
maybe if “bitch” weren’t an acceptable lyrical substitute for “girl”
maybe if women’s bodies weren’t commodified in practically every music video regardless of genre
maybe then i would have some more trouble figuring out why chris brown was welcomed back into the music industry with open arms
"Gamers get hella uncomfortable over male sexuality too. Can you imagine a “good male character who just happens to be wearing sexually exploitative outfits because he’s ok with his masculinity?” Constantly has the camera pan lovingly over his asscrack and firm glutes, and big ole dangly ballsack that is totes sweaty from all this MMA and soldiering. Time to hit the showers, and do you, personally, think it’s ok to have a long slow pan up the dude’s package (indiscreetly hidden in a jock of course), to his chiseled physique and erect nipples (pierced). He’s not even a Bond-esque confident man, he’s basically a weird Bowie caricature that’s constantly having near-dickslips in every single cinematic as the completely nonsexualized female characters do their business of being gruff and shooting dudes and advancing the plot. Finally, at the end he falls in love (out of nowhere) and/or is killed by the big baddie."
a forum post I read recently, trying to give a solid example of what ‘male objectification in gaming ’ would actually look like if it was anything equivalent to current female objectification in gaming. (via nothingbutsurrender)
"Through the process of socialization we learn to be sexist, even if throughout history women have proven time and time again to be just as capable as men. Sexism is not a biological function of humans, it is taught and it is learned. Just like how men learn to rape, men learn to be sexist. Calling a woman a “bitch” because she wont be submissive and calling a man a “bitch” because he seems submissive only shows how arrogance – not biology – is our only roadblock to equality."
This is wonderful.
Gay Fetishism, media, and why the way you ship things is important.
So I’ve been seeing a lot of things on my dash lately that have been making me really uncomfortable, and I realized that a lot of the people doing these things were people I like, people I respect, people who I think are genuinely good people who probably don’t realize that they’re doing or why it’s problematic. If you read through this and wonder if it’s about you, it probably is: please don’t be offended. Just take a step back and think instead.
Gay characters on television (in this case, almost exclusively male gay characters) get a lot of attention from Tumblr. This in itself isn’t inherently a bad thing. Gay characters often have plotlines and background that are just as - or even moreso - interesting than those of their straight counterparts. We like seeing something different on our favourite show, we like to feel like the things we’re watching are diverse and inclusive. All of these are good intentions. Unfortunately, what seems to be happening is that this gets taken to a whole other level. For some reason the gay characters have become automatically more interesting than any hetero characters, gay ships are more engrossing than hetero ships (A LOT of which has to do with the internalized sexism that goes on in pretty much every television fandom, but that’s another thing for another day), even if these characters or ships are fleeting or badly written or incredibly problematic, until it gets to this point where you’re shipping any two boys you can get your hands on regardless of actual compatibility, actual well-roundedness, or foundation, or anything other than “Two boys together!”. It turns into this obsession. I’ve seen it happen, I see it on my dash every day.
This takes me to a whole other thing. Shipping people irl is really a huge issue. I don’t mean real person fiction, I’m a part of that fandom myself. Something most rpfers pride themselves on is their ability to compartmentalize real!Celebrity from fic!Celebrity. What I’m talking about is when you’re out to lunch and you see two boys driving in a car together and you ship them. Or you’re at the campus center and two boys are sitting next to each other and you’re secretly hoping that they’ll start holding hands. What you’re doing is fetishizing. It’s as similarly creepy as “breaking the fourth wall” when it comes to rpf except probably more damaging. When one single person tweets something weird or creepy at a celebrity, chances are it will be overlooked and life will move on, but when you get to the point where you’ll ship strangers you see in real life just because they’re of the same gender and attractive, you’re losing your ability to compartmentalize, and as a result you’re allowing your entire perception of gayness to be skewed into something that was made for you to watch.
If you’re still not convinced, think of it this way: if a straight boy was constantly seeing “lesbians” everywhere, or talking about how those girls would look so good together, or making up headcanon about you and one of your platonic girlfriends, you would think he was creepy as fuck, sexist, and probably a pervert. Because he isn’t seeing you or other girls as people with real agency, he’s seeing you as an object to project onto. He’s invalidating your personhood and your sexuality and making your actual queer friends feel like their sexuality isn’t a real identity. That is what you’re doing to these boys; straight or gay, real or fictional, you are projecting onto them and invalidating them.
This bothers me with television because I often see people fawn over these characters who are brilliantly written and wonderfully flawed, but are only being appreciated as a Gay Guy or One Half of My Otp. On the other side of the coin, I see characters who only existed for a couple of episodes, who had no real backstory or meat to them being treated the same way- a way which isn’t really deserved or well founded.
If the only things you can tell me about your Otp are “But they’re so right for each other! They just work! They love each other so much!” then I’m probably not going to take your ship very seriously. I think shipping is excellent. I’m a terrible multi-shipper, I’ve got at least three Otps for just about whatever fandom I’m into. But there has to be some kind of thought there. You can’t just ship people together because they’re the same gender. It’s a discredit to yourself and your characters and your show.
Gayness does not exist for you. Your worship of it as cuter or more real or more meaningful than other relationships is damaging and problematic. Gayness in television and other media is not important because you get to ship it. It is not important because it’s a fuck you to your homophobic parents. It is not important because it makes you favourite show more “diverse”. Gayness in media is important because it is representation for people who have not gotten that in the past, and who are still not getting a lot of it unless they’re male, white, and attractive (or in the case of queer female characters, white, young, attractive, and willing to get naked).
What you’re doing does not make you supportive or an ally, it’s problematic and it’s something we really, really need to try and keep in check. I’m so tired of the gay worshiping fetishism on my dash, you guys. Let’s try to fix it.
All of this. I’m all for queering up everything; the more queer characters and ships, the more I can relate to a show or book, and the more recognition and validation queer people get [media representation matters]. But there is a definite line between “it would be really great if we could have these two people have a legitimate queer relationship and it not be a big deal” and “omg I ship these two guys together look at me I’m so radical!!!” And the latter definitely happens. I’m not saying that everyone who tends to ship queer characters more than straight ones is doing this, just that it does happen an uncomfortable amount. We’re not here for your fetishization. We’re actual people embattled in a struggle for legitimization.
"One popular classroom exercise, for example, employs Scotch Tape to demonstrate how premarital sex can make girls dirty. A teacher holds up a clear strip of tape, meant to represent a girl, in front of the class. The teacher then puts the strip of tape, adhesive side down, on the arm of a boy in the class, to symbolize his sexual relationship with the girl. The teacher rips off the tape (signifying the breakup, apparently) and holds it up again for the class to look at. Students are meant to see that the strip of tape—the girl—has picked up all kinds of dirt and hair from the boy’s arm and is no longer clean. Then, when the teacher tries to stick the same strip to another boy’s arm, he or she notes that it doesn’t stick—they can’t bond! To end things with a bang, the abstinence educator makes a remark about the girl’s being “used” and therefore unable to have strong future relationships."
Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth (via wishful-sinful)
This was done in my “sex ed” class about 4 times in my grade school career.
(via the-sexpert)
WHO DOES THAT. Ugh. My faith in humanity is constantly diminishing.
(via becauseiamawoman)
What the abstinence-pushing fuck is this?
Neither my vagina NOR my ability to have a relationship are made of adhesive tape. If my vagina were, then wearing a pad would be quite difficult. This is preemptive slut shaming at its very finest. Notice how it’s the GIRL who has suddenly become dirty and unable to bond. It has nothing to do with the boy, from whom she GOT all that dirtiness from. His ability to bond is completely unaffected. No matter how the relationship ended, it is the GIRL who was used; it is the GIRL who is dirty; it is the GIRL who can never bond or have a meaningful relationship again.
This isn’t sex education. This isn’t abstinence education. This is “How to Shame Your Local Slut, 101”.
(via dashdotdashbackslash)
the vp of komen, everyone.
i’ll just let this speak for itself.
just want to clarify something about this komen business i haven’t seen discussed yet
though it’s possible i just missed it, as i haven’t been doing a lot of deep reading on this yet.
restricted grants (such as the grant from komen to planned parenthood) require organizations to only spend the incoming money on the thing the grant is for. that’s written into them. organizations like PP are also required by the terms of the grant to report ALL spending of grant monies back to the grantmaker, or NO MONEY WILL BE DISBURSED.
this means, for those of you who have never worked for a foundation or in a nonprofit, that ZERO ACTUAL REAL LIFE DOLLARS from komen went to abortions, birth control, or other heathen-y goodnesses.
meaning that what the people who are celebrating this defunding are celebrating is that millions of men and women will now go without breast exams and mammograms.
many of them will die.
this is correct. planned parenthood even has their abortion services kept separate, in all organizational ways, from their other services [which planned parenthood calls “family planning”]. it makes it easier all around, especially since federal money can’t go towards abortions and the abortion side can’t have lobbyists for certain things. their grants, fundraisers, and all other major sources of funding are collected with regards to which program they fund: abortion services, or family planning [which includes breast cancer screening]. hell, even when you donate a few dollars of your own, you can specify which program you want it to go towards, although most people don’t do this. [as a related aside, this also means that when federal funding is cut, their preventative services like annual exams, birth control, and HIV testing are cut, NOT abortion services which rely on private sources of funding.]
i’ve never been a big fan of komen for various reasons [saying that as someone whose parent died of breast cancer, by the way] but this just ensures that i really don’t want to support them.
HEY HERE IS A FUN REMINDER
- you do not
- ever
- under any circumstances
- tell
- a person
- to go and kill themselves
- you do not do it
- you especially do not do it
- if said person
- is suffering from any sort of mental disorder/has suicidal tendencies
- basically
- fuck
- you
- so very much
- I am so angry right now
- I can’t coherently express myself
- just
- how dare you
- how
- dare
- you
