rraaaarrl:

Misandry.jpg

(via peechington-marie)

anjasa:

friendlycloud:

agewa:

“We went to Kineshma, that’s in Ivanovo region, to visit his parents. I went as a heroine and I never expected someone to welcome me, a front-line girl, like that. We’ve gone through so much, we’ve saved lives, lifes of mothers, wives. And then… I heard accusations, I was bad-mouthed. Before that I’ve only ever been “dear sister”… We had tea and my husband’s mother took him aside and started crying: “Who did you marry? A front-line girl… You have two younger sisters. Who’s going to marry them now?” When I think back to that moment I feel tears welling up. Imagine: I had a record, I loved it a lot. There was a song, it said: you have the right to wear the best shoes. That was about a front-line girl. I had it playing, and [his?] elder sister came up and broke it apart, saying: you have no rights. They destroyed all my photos from the war… We, front-line girls, went through so much during hte war… and then we had another war. Another terrible war. The men left us, they didn’t cover our backs. Not like at the front.” from С.Алексеевич “У войны не женское лицо”

In Soviet Union women participating in WWII were erased from history, remaining as the occasional anecdote of a female sniper or simply as medical staff or, at best, radio specialists. The word “front-line girl” (frontovichka) became a terrible insult, synonimous to “whore”. Hundreds thousand of girls who went to war to protect their homeland with their very lives, who came back injured or disabled, with medals for valor, had to hide it to protect themselves from public scorn. 

This has always happened in history: Women do something important. Then they get shamed for it (so nobody will talk about it) and it gets erased from history.

And then certain men will say: “Women suck, they’ve never done anything important.”

Look into history and learn that women have played a far greater role then douches (present and past) wanted you to know.

People pretend that women didn’t do anything of interest until the 60s, and this is why.

(via beyondvictoriana)

girljanitor:

notwiththoseshoesonboi:

girljanitor:

notwiththoseshoesonboi:

studentagainstdebt:

College Grads May Be Stuck in Low-Skill Jobs

The recession left millions of college-educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.

Underemployment—skilled workers doing jobs that don’t require their level of education—has been one of the hallmarks of the slow recovery. By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t traditionally require a college degree.

Economists have generally assumed the problem was temporary: As the economy improved, companies would need more highly educated employees. But in a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of Canadian economists argues that the U.S. faces a longer-term problem.

And so

We come back to this again

They WONDER why we’re not buying cars

They WONDER why we’re not investing in the economy

They WONDER why we’re not starting families (AHAHHAHA some of us can’t even fucking get married and shit but that’s moot for this convo)

They WONDER why we’re not buying houses

THEN they expect us to fund their bullshit and keep THEM afloat when most of us can’t even stay alive

And when you add in the STRESS brought on from people lumping all these expectations onto you, what do you get? Oh…right, complete and total collapse along with a myriad of other issues because you’ve got a fucking magnifying glass hovering over you on what is essentially a perpetually sunny day in the middle of Death Valley California. 

Now

For the oppressed groups

Add in job discrimination

Add in housing discrimination

Add in a metric fuckton of blockades meant to make sure you don’t succeed because you don’t fit someone’s idea of a perfect employee simply because of how you look/what you are 

If shit isn’t going to get better than what.the.fuck. is the point of college/higher education?

Folks might as well just stop going

Fuck the colleges then

They’re already overpriced (and getting more expensive by the minute) and you don’t actually learn anything half the time

And on top of ALLLLLLL OF THIS

On top of this ice cream cake of death and torture

You’ve got a toxic culture that only treats you like a human being if you fit a certain ideal of who is human and normal

Fuck everything  

While the difference between incomes from people who hold degrees and people who don’t may be narrowing, it is still enough to make a world of difference in my life. In fact, going into scary debt in order to get a fingerhold on a ledge over the pit of working janitorial for the rest of my life was really the only way out of an endless cycle of poverty for me.

The game is rigged, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have to play it, in other words.

It doesn’t make anything you have to say about it any less valid, but considering my disabilities and my skill set, academia has been one of the only safe(er) havens for Autistic people for a very, very long time. Technology is the other one, and I don’t have any skills there.

Yeah I was hoping someone would also say this (hence why I put the “please call me out” in the tags) 

Yeah!!

I was hoping someone would say what you said! I don’t really have anything else to say without being redundant x_x  So I’ll just bold stuff 

Yes, I could tell you were already aware of mitigating factors. The narrowing gap in earnings would be a lot less important if college was less expensive, elitist, and fucking ridiculous in every way.

That being said, after all is said and done for me in the educational area, if I don’t land a job making at least 50-80k a year, I’m going to have significant difficulties paying off the debts I’ve incurred out of necessity. I regularly ask professors what they make at community colleges and whatnot in order to get some kind of estimate what my worst-case-scenario bottom line would be, and if I stay in this area (affluent suburb in Upstate New York), I’ll probably be okay. Passing for white sadly makes a significant difference.

theviraltruth:

The First Amendment does not protect you from:

• Criticism: If you’re a comedian who makes a bad rape joke, people are allowed to point out that you’re not funny as well as an asshole.
• Shame: If you tweet something racist about President Obama on your public Twitter account that’s connected to your first and last name, people are allowed to say that is bad.
• The Right to Anonymity: If you take creepy photos of women without their consent and post them on Reddit, people are allowed to try and figure out who you are and post your information on the internet. No one is entitled to anonymity. It’s up to you whether to make it easy for people to find you.
• Mockery: If you put yourself out there that means your peers (and news outlets) have the right to LOL and comment.
• Consequences: If you publicly express yourself in a manner that is offensive, hurtful, or just plain dumb, strangers might contact your friends/family/school/employer and tell them what you did. That is not infringing on your right to free speech; it’s pointing out how you choose to exercise that right. Like the rest of the federal constitution, the First Amendment protects us from the government, not from private companies, which may be able to fire or otherwise punish you for stuff you say, even if it’s outside of work. The laws protecting the free speech of private employees vary from state to state, aside from specifically protected speech like labor organizing. Here are some guidelines for public employees and students.

via An Idiot’s Guide to Free Speech

(via mermeanie)

melanatedcontributions:

The Taino Indians 
Native Americans of the Caribbean

The Taino Indians: Native Americans of the Caribbean

“Who are the Tainos? The U.S. Government says they are extinct, but they are not. Most likely you might know them as Latinos, a Spanish speaking person of Latin American (the Spanish speaking part of the Americas, south of the U.S.) descent. Not all, but many modern day Tainos are unaware of their lineage. To understand how that could happen you must know the story from the beginning.

Approximately 1,500 years ago, the Arawak people of South America began migrating northward along the many scattered islands located between South and North America, an area we now refer to as the Caribbean. For a thousand years their population grew and the people lived in harmony. The people covered all the islands of the Caribbean, the major ones as they are now known: Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola as well as all the smaller ones: the Bahamas, Bimini, Jamaica etc. Certain groups of island people identified themselves as Lokono, Lucayan, Carib, Ciboney, Arawak, but most islands were primarily inhabited by people who called themselves Taino, which stood for “the good people” in their language. The different groups intermarried extensively to strengthen ties amongst themselves.

Theirs was a beautiful culture. They were aware of a Divine presence whom they called Yocahu, and to worship and give thanks was a major part of their lives. They had a social order that provided the leaders and guidelines by which they all lived. They hunted, fished, cultivated crops and ate the abundant fruits provided by nature. They were clever and ingenious and had everything they needed to survive. They had beautiful ceremonies that were held at various times - birth, death, marriage, harvest, naming and coming of age, to name a few. They had special reverence for the Earth Mother (Atabey) and had respect for all living things knowing that all living things are connected. There was little need for clothing due to the tropic heat, but upon reaching puberty both males and females would wear a small woven loincloth. Puberty was also the time at which they were considered old enough to be married. The population estimates for the Taino people at the height of their culture are as high as 8,000,000. That was in 1492….

In 1492, the Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, was loaned three small, old ships from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain for a questionable voyage across the sea in which he hoped to reach India or China. Although Marco Polo had sailed around the world 300 years earlier, and the Norsemen 500 years earlier, there were few sailors willing to sail into the unknown, so the King and Queen released some prisoners early to accompany Columbus on the voyage. On October 12, 1492 after two months at sea Columbus and his crew finally spotted land. Upon reaching the land, Columbus fell to his knees, thanked God for a safe voyage and planted a flag in the ground, claiming the land for Spain - as the Tainos who had lived there for 1,000 years watched from behind trees and bushes.

The Taino had never before seen white men, clothed people, people with beards or ships like that - they thought these people must be from heaven. So the Taino came out to greet them, as was their custom, and brought the travelers - who surely must have been tired and hungry - food, drink and gifts. Such strong swimmers were the Taino that some of them swam right out to the boats some three miles offshore.

That very first night Columbus wrote in his journal that these islands were very heavily populated by a handsome, strong, well-built and peaceful people who had only simple weapons and that with as few as 50 of his men and their weapons he could take over. Much is said about Columbus’ desire to convert the “savages” to Christianity, but very little is said about his quest for gold, although Columbus mentions gold in his journal 70 times in his first two weeks in the islands. The very first day, Columbus “took” several Native boys aboard his ship to show him where the gold was.

Columbus spent the next two months looking for gold. Just when he was about to return to Spain, on Christmas Eve his ship the Santa Maria ran aground and sank. The Taino people helped him to retrieve every salvageable item. A problem arose in that now all the sailors who had accompanied Columbus could not fit on the two remaining (and smaller) ships. So a fort was built using the salvaged wood from the Santa Maria and 39 men were left behind at a fort Columbus called La Navidad. Shortly thereafter, Columbus set sail for Spain, taking some of the Natives and birds, food and plants to show the King and Queen.

Columbus was received in a manner never before seen and his stories of the “New World” were listened to with awe. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella immediately gave Columbus seventeen large ships, livestock & supplies to return to their newly acquired lands and colonize them. This time there was no shortage of men willing to sign up for the ocean voyage: 1,200 men eagerly signed up for the voyage and the chance to get rich quick on the gold to be found in the New World.

Upon arrival at La Navidad in the second voyage, Columbus found the fort burned to the ground and all 39 of the men he had left behind had been killed. It seems the sailors left behind had “misbehaved” as our history books tell it, but their “misbehaving” was in often in the form of rape of the local women and children and theft of anything they saw that they wanted.

One of the local leaders - or Kasikes as they were called - named Caonabo, had met with the other leaders and all but one agreed that men who were gods would never have behaved in the manner the Spanish had, and they decided the Spaniards had to go, and so they eliminated the Spaniards and the threat they posed to their people.

Columbus vowed to find Caonabo and retaliate. From that point on, life as the Taino knew it ended. Columbus forced all of them over the age of 14 to work in the gold mines searching for gold for the Spaniards. Those who refused were killed. Those who did not make their quota of gold had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Taino women were given to Spaniards to do with whatever they wished. The fields, unattended, failed to yield enough food for the Taino (and the Spaniards whose supplies had run out). All were hungry. Many Taino starved to death, others were worked to death. They were beaten, tortured, raped, enslaved and murdered. Columbus found Caonabo - they tricked him in order to capture him - and he was put on a ship that was sent to Spain and was never heard from again.

When the time came for Columbus to return to Spain, he did not have nearly enough gold to pay for his expedition, so he had his men round up 1,000 of the very biggest and strongest Taino. They found they could only fit 500 of them in the stinking holds of the ships, so Columbus took those 500 aboard to be sold at the slave market in Seville to raise money to repay the King and Queen, and he gave the other 500 Taino to Spanish colonists. Over 250 of the Taino died en route to Spain, and their bodies were tossed overboard.

When Columbus returned for the third time, not much had changed, there was still little gold. The colonists brutally forced the Taino to look for it. The food shortages were so severe it was said that the Spaniards fed Taino babies to their dogs. The mood among the Taino was one of complete and utter helplessness and desperation. Some took their own lives to escape the brutalities and indignities. The colonists, failing to get rich quick as they had hoped, threatened to revolt against Columbus. Word got back to the King and Queen of the situation and Columbus was sent back to Spain in chains to stand trial for his “mismanagement” of the islands. He was stripped of his titles and all claims to the lands he had “discovered” (to those who had lived in the islands and thought they had discovered them, he would always be known as the “invader”).

He lived to make a fourth voyage to the islands. The people there, once proud and strong, were reduced from an estimated 8 million to 60 thousand in 10 years’ time. Those that remained ran up high in the densely forested hills and mountains and hid.

But, they survived. Many later married Spaniards; others married the African slaves that Columbus’ ships later brought in to replace the decimated Taino work force. You can see the existence of all three races in the faces of many modern day Caribbean peoples - but they all fall under the category of “Latino”. If you look at maps, many areas still retain their original indigenous place-names. If you listen to the language, you will still hear many indigenous words used. And although the Caribbean has be explored and exploited again and again by the many greedy adventurers who have passed through, many of the customs practiced by the Taino are still in use and a big part of the culture throughout the Caribbean today.

What is the logic behind the government giving a man credit for discovering lands that were already densely populated, and honoring that same man whose actions had the devastating consequences of slavery and death to so many people, with one of our eight federal holidays (i.e. holy day)? Or, is there any logic at all there?

And, why are the Taino people, who do still exist in spite of what you may be told, denied legal federal recognition? And, why are Native Americans, who have given so much to the formation of this country, still not honored with a federal holiday of their own?

Please do more than think about this… do something about this….. let’s all work together to end the insult and injustice to the people who have truly paid the highest possible price for the land in which we all live today.”

(via fuckyeahethnicwomen)

laffbending:

glamaphonic:

delladilly:

okay, so i am extremely uncomfortable with several things here:

1. i—a white cis lesbian—am not and should not be the voice of any critical response to published white straight authors’ public discussion of diversity in young adult literature. i do not like being approached by now multiple published authors about it after a discussion that dozens of people had. in responding to sarah rees brennan’s ask, i asked for other people to contribute, and many did. i am making this response rebloggable as well for this same reason. i really, really do not like being put in this position. i also apologize for having spoken above or for anyone else in this discussion; i do recognize that my voice is already proportionately very privileged.
2. i do not enjoy, after a fannish discussion about a deeply flawed publishing environment, being scolded by an author (with whom i have never spoken) about my requested attempt to explain—or, as i tried and possibly failed to do, amplify explanation of—many marginalized people’s dissatisfaction with said environment and with allies’ behavior. the power dynamics here are inherently silencing.
3. the assumption that criticizing allies’ behavior, words, or actions therefore produces “guilt and fear and takes away from actual discourse” is also shockingly incredibly silencing! the environment of young adult publishing and much of society gives a hugely disproportionate weight to certain people’s voices. but just because those people attempt—or, to some extent, succeed—to use their voices for good does not mean we ought not criticize the ways they do fail and the ways they can do better. emphasizing that white straight cisgendered allies not feel silenced or afraid in discussions of diversity is, i am sorry, deeply fucked up. if someone in a position of power and privilege to me is attempting to speak for me, no matter how benevolently, yeah, i actually do want them to be a little afraid. i want them to have to consider at length every single thing they do because they know it will actually have consequences. i want them to listen to me and others more silenced than me. and i want them to try to do better, as sarah rees brennan said she would try to do better after people expressed their anger and dissatisfaction to her.

i recognize that this conversation probably makes other people as or more uncomfortable than it makes me, so please do not feel obligated to respond! but i would really appreciate others’ contributions, corrections, or criticisms. i am tagging this “ya convo” for your blacklists. 

I don’t have much to add to this except to reiterate the extent to which a few people on Tumblr — most, if not all, from the marginalized groups under discussion — pointing out their discomfort with

a) people in a position of privilege persistently being called upon to speak on these topics in lieu of actual members of those marginalized groups

AND

b) these discussions veering towards patting these allies on the back for being so wonderful as to acknowledge the personhood of marginalized people

is in no way silencing those privileged persons who are still being interviewed and asked to discuss this and seen as leading the discourse and who still have a much larger platform than people like @delladilly or myself.

Also, as someone who explicitly stated that I think that in the future people in SRB’s position should consider declining such offers, I certainly wasn’t intimating that she’s not allowed to talk ever. Simply that she should use her platform to amplify the voices of the marginalized instead of, wittingly or not, trying to BE our voice.

Yes, I agree whole heartedly with everything above especially the bold. Speaking as a woman of color, I will be completely honest in saying that I have no interest in hearing about how white authors have to sometimes deal with barriers in publishing works with characters of color. And I do not care about how benevolent they are and how they want to push diversity in their works, because in publishing, they will not be branded as a special interests author like an author of color who wants a work with primarily characters of color. Unintentionally, these (white) authors have somehow become the voices for speaking about diversity in YA lit and its maddening to me, when there are prominent authors of color who could have been interviewed, whose voices I want to hear about, whose voices are more important to me, whose experiences are way more relatable to me. You want white allies to talk about diversity in terms of race? Have them say that while they will do their best to include characters of different races/ethnicities, they ultimately have no business speaking about it and direct interviews elsewhere. That is not silencing. People will still pat them on the back for meeting the basic standards of literary decency, but at least the spotlight will be on people who have actual real life experience with it.

Telling them that they do not have the life experience/identities to talk about it/that i don’t care to hear them talk about it/that they should use their power and privilege to direct the attention to actual authors of color is not silencing them. What is silencing is published authors, with more power than fans talking about their frustrations, going into fan inboxes and pushing their way into the conversation. That is intimidating and creates an environment where I don’t feel like airing my frustrations for fear of being harassed by their fanbase.

(via jiggit)