Source: susannathinks
a life of fragments: [tw ableism, ableist slurs] Conflating violence with mental illness is always harmful.
1. If someone with a mental illness does something violent, the mental illness is assumed to be the cause of the violence.
2. If someone without mental illness does something violent, they are assumed to have a mental illness. [Perceived] Sanity is conditional, in this sense.
3. The exception…
PETA, BWVAKTBOOM, and the way not to raise awareness.
Today I found out about PETA’s BWVAKTBOOM (boyfriend who went vegan and knocked the bottom out of me - website here: http://www.bwvaktboom.com/ ) campaign. I found the commercial, uh, upsetting, and the information on the website not that great either.
So I wrote them a letter -
*fuming*
Source: warbirdie
One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
Source: rethinkingschools.org
Hey Feminists
If you really cared about equality, you would call yourself humanists.
Problem?
Andrea Rubenstein has an answer for you (emphasis mine):
For one, both humanism and equalism approach equality from the perspective of a level playing field. Meaning that they don’t acknowledge privilege and therefore give equal weight to actions that, in our society, feminism (and other focused anti-oppression movements) sees as not being equal. Feminism rejects the idea of “genderblind” or “colourblind” systems because historically they create the illusion of equality and make it that much harder to struggle for actual equality.
For another, and I briefly mentioned this when I was discussing equalism, feminism is focused on the equality of women. Most schools of feminism acknowledge that other forms of anti-oppression work are important, and many feminists self-identify as anti-oppression in other areas, but when we present ourselves — online, in person, in our written works or other media — as feminists, we’re standing up and saying, “Achieving equality for women is important, and it’s equally important to acknowledge that, despite how far we’ve come, we still have a long way to go and women are still, all other things being equal, not treated as fairly as men.”
Realize that anyone who tries to put you down about your appearance is assuming that it is your job to please them visually. Once you realize that it isn’t your job to be visually pleasing to anyone, ever, it becomes very hard for anyone to make you feel bad about yourself.
Skeptifem (in this interview: http://teenskepchick.org/2011/07/14/teen-skepchick-interviews-skeptifem/ )
Oh, wow. I never thought about it this way before. I am going to try to keep this in mind!
(via special-k-art)
Yet another corollary to “I do not live to fucking please you”, which is fast becoming my central lesson of 2011.
(via stfupenguins)
I’m working hard on taking this to heart.
(via stfuconservatives)
