photomanic:

Everyone should read this. 

And then there’s Sansa. Sansa Stark who named her deadly, killer direwolf Lady. And she trained her to be gentle, and quiet, and sweet and loving. And then what happens? The Baratheons have her killed. So now Sansa is so alone, having lost her family, her home and her Lady. But she is the exact opposite of what her father said would happen to wolves who end up alone. Ned Stark said that the only way they could survive was to stick together, and that was never an option. Robb had their mother. Rickon and Bran had Winterfell and then each other. Jon is on the wall, with his brothers, and then across it with Ygritte, then back to the wall. Arya had Gendry, and is still linked to Nymeria. But Sansa has absolutely no one who is her family. So she takes the strength and poise of a lady, and turns it into something as deadly and defensive as a direwolf’s fangs and claws. She knows that she is alone, and that no one is coming for her, so she adapts. She plays the game, she keeps her mouth shut, she stays alive.

Because the best way to hide a wolf, to keep people feeling safe, is to make them think it’s just a well trained dog.

echrai (via eeshtar)

reagan-was-a-horrible-president:

One Republican has the guts to straight-up admit the truth.

(Source: questionall)

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.

In one recent study, more than 100 university psychologists were asked to rate the CVs of Dr. Karen Miller or Dr. Brian Miller, fictitious applicants for an academic tenure-track job. The CVs were identical, apart from the name. Yet strangely, the male Dr. Miller was perceived (by both male and female reviewers) to have better research, teaching, and service experience than the luckless female Dr. Miller. Overall, about three-quarters of the psychologists thought that Dr. Brian was hirable, while only just under half had the same confidence in Dr. Karen. The same researchers also sent out applications for the position of tenured professor, again identical but for the male and female name at the top. This time, the application was so strong that most of the raters thought that tenure was deserved, regardless of sex. However, the endorsement of Karen’s application was four times more likely to be accompanied by cautionary caveats scrawled in the margins of the questionnaire: such as, ‘I would need to see evidence that she had gotten these grants and publications on her own’ and ‘We would have to see her job talk.’

Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (via cockchomp)

▸ Arrows and Time: maggiemerc: So there’s this back and forth on my dash about Joss...

takemyhandanyway:

maggiemerc:

So there’s this back and forth on my dash about Joss Whedon and whether or not he is the savior come down from the mountain to make folks progressive and I was like, “well yeah, guy has done a lot” and then I remembered all the stuff he did that is less than okay. So here be some lists.

Stuff that is pretty fucking great

1. Was a staff writer on Roseanne, a critical piece of television that gave voices to a frequently silenced working class America and the women who led those families.
2. Created Buffy, a feminist icon and cultural touchstone.
3. Created one of the best shows in television history, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
4. Gave us a loving lesbian romance that is popular to this day in the form of Willow and Tara.
5. Gave us a whole bevy of fantastic heroines over the course of Buffy and Angel.
6. Created Firefly, which took the standard female western archetypes and fleshed them out.
7. Firefly acknowledged that China could become the sole superpower one day and maybe that wouldn’t suck.
8. Made sure Gina Torres had a job.
9. Created Dollhouse and dared to ask some heavy questions concerning the nature of self.
10. Dollhouse also examined consent and modern America’s relationship with the concept.
11. Directed one of the most feminist Shakespeare adaptations ever when he shot Much Ado About Nothing.
12. Made Avengers. It was really good. Ladies were in it and didn’t die and weren’t damsels in distress.

Stuff that is PROBLEMATIC AS FUCK

1. All those fantastic heroines in Buffy and Angel. Nearly all white (Kendra is the only woman of color I can remember having a multi-episode arc).
2. Many of them were permanently killed (RIP Kendra da vampaya slaya). 
3. The ones who were not white were more likely to die.
4. Killed off Tara and made Willow insane in the process thus using two of the most tired and destructive tropes to lesbian representation.
5. Charisma Carpenter discovered she was pregnant while shooting Angel. Elected not to tell Whedon or production until late in her pregnancy. Whedon fired her as a result. It was many, many years before they would talk to each other again.
6. Despite Firefly being set in a universe that is a giant mixing pot of cultures and dominated by the Chinese had no Chinese or Chinese-American actors in the main cast.
7. White people drive the action in every project he writes.
8. Seemed to support some REALLY questionable ethics in Dollhouse.
9. Refrigeratored Penny in Dr. Horrible—thus continuing the trend of killing off female characters so male characters can be sad.
10. Gave us exactly one female team member in Avengers.
11. Is adding another female team member for Avengers 2. All casting rumors have suggested she will be white.
12. His shows? Pass the Bechdel test far less than you’d think—particularly Buffy, where her conversations with other women are often related to boyfriends, potential boyfriends or guys about to end the world.

Whedon has acknowledged he’s not the best. He’s acknowledged that his incorporation of dynamic female characters isn’t radical but common sense. In the case of the Charisma Carpenter incident and the Willow/Tara issue he’s even admitted he made mistakes (didn’t help Carpenter who had trouble finding work afterwards, and Tara is still dead).

As a white male showrunner the guy is pretty great.

As a progressive showrunner breaking down barriers? He’s got a long way to go.

Do his problematic shows and films make him the devil?

Do their progressive elements make hims a saint?

Man that’s up to every person to determine on their own.

 #I have a lot of feelings about him #good and bad #and I would really like if people didn’t act like it had to be one or the other (via taibhsearachd)

I adore him most of the time.  I love his writing, I tend to love his characters.  He is not the OMG PROGRESSIVE AMAZING SAVIOR, but neither is he the DEVIL INCARNATE LYING ABOUT HOW HE’S A FEMINIST.  He’s a straight white male, he fucks up sometimes, he realizes that he’s not perfect, and he keeps trying.  Maybe it’s not always enough, and sometimes he pisses me off royally because it feels like he’s not trying enough/he does something deeply problematic.  

He’s not the devil, and he’s not a saint.  I don’t have to agree with/make excuses for every problematic thing he’s done just because I generally like him.

brigantes:

girls on their periods

skyghe:

thinksquad:

More and more children being arrested for trivial things…

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

HERE ARE THE LINKS FOR THOSE WHO FEEL THIS PAGE MADE ALL THIS UP:

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/texas-student-sarah-bustamantes-12-arrested-for-spraying-perfume/13250/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=15077292

Check out this video on YouTube:http://youtu.be/wk2b_twCCdw

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/feb/11/port-st-lucie-schools-confines-6-year-old-with/

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/29/nc-high-school-senior-suspended-charged-possesion-small-knife-lunchbox/#

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2009/june09/zero-tolerance-states.html

http://m.tauntongazette.com/wkdTGazette/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Mateo-pays-family-of-boy-pepper-sprayed-by-cop-2384518.php

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/cops-called-for-school-kiss-657831

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/02/charlton-library-sends-police-to-collect-overdue-books-from-5-year-old/

Conditioning your children.

xilliannax:

You know who cares about thigh gaps? Girls.

(Source: genuinely-alfie)

As Jameel Jaffar, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, put it today, imagine if the government required every American to report to the government every night who they spoke to, or texted, for how long, and from where. People would be furious, but that’s precisely the information the N.S.A. is collecting from telecom companies. And it’s precisely why the government desperately wanted to keep the practice a secret.

What’s the Purpose of the N.S.A. Surveillance Program? (via wilwheaton)