“You’re only shipping those two characters for fun!!!” i mean… yes?
as opposed to doing the hip new thing of picking a ship for its supposed ideological purity, and then not contributing anything to the community except shitty discourse and a toxic atmosphere, I guess?
Today I was chatting with a coworker who I knew had been in an abusive relationship in the past. She was laughing as she told me and another coworker about how her ex never let her leave the house. Like she was for real cracking jokes about his jealous rages and how she wasn’t allowed to so much as set foot outside their door if he wasn’t with her, and the way she was telling it was funny, so we laughed along. “That’s why I enjoy doing the little things now, like taking the bus and going to the bank,” she said, and we all giggled because who likes public transportation and doing errands, right?
Then she got serious for the first time since the conversation started, it lasted only for a few moments, but I will never forget the one sentence that she said without smiling: “I’m going to die before I let that happen to me again.”
There was also this one rape victim whom a relative of mine represented in court. The rapist’s lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out that she’d laughed while giving her testimony. She was eighteen years old on the witness stand, telling a judge and a room full of people about what had been done to her. She giggled because she was embarrassed about having to describe the graphic sex acts, and she nearly lost her case because of that.
I have classmates who laughed while telling me about old men who stole kisses from them. Who made jokes out of stories about their boyfriends screening their messages and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do. I have known girls who were molested and manipulated for years, who shake their heads and snicker at their own past selves, how could I have let him do that to me, I was so naive, hahaha. This one woman reenacted for me, complete with dramatic gestures and voice impersonations, how her ex-husband who was under a Temporary Restraining Order scaled the gate of her house with a gun, and how she’d locked herself in her bedroom and screamed at the police over the phone to come NOW. Both of us were in stitches at the end of her tale, clutching our stomachs in mirth.
Just because they laugh doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
I can laugh about my abusive ex now because I’m not with him and will never have to let him near me again. I also sometimes wake in a cold sweat because I dreamed that I didn’t leave him. Laughing about trauma is an odd coping skill, but it is super common because it helps people stay sane in the face of awful things. We laugh to keep from crying.
All vodka is gay. This vodka is especially gay which is wonderful.
vodka companies’ marketing their products to LGBT people: Choose Love! our products enable you to not-feel despair or the shame you’ve been taught to feel, and that’s not love, but isn’t it something? Choose Us! use us to pinkwash your trauma down! Love is Love is preying on a population that’s been removed from and prevented from entering every meetingplace but bars, and then only some bars, and even then people who are interested in harming LGBT people might target those bars! even the bars that are supposed to be your best shot at being in the presence of other LGBT people might still put up walls! Love is Love is preying on people who abuse alcohol to cope with being targets of homophobia/transphobia! stimulant laxative brands advertise specifically to women: is that women-affirmative, or is it predatory? the biggest social group at my LGBTQ center is AA.
this already sucks but i love the het couple kissing and the gay couples hugging chastely
I believe this is exclusive to UK at Tesco. It’s also from possibly last year. These are ones from this year.
I do think LGBTQ marketing is a little offputting. Especially since alcoholism is common in our community due to depression, isolation and self-hatred.
how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.
my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.
and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young?
maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.
Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD
Also consider:
Person A: yeah, she’s eaten bread from a lot of ovens Person B: what Person A: do you not say that in english
Alright Anon, let’s clear one thing up before I go into detail, because I do want to make this clear! You do not have to support anything you see in fiction. If something does not sit well with you or offends you, you 1000% can just stay away from it, criticise it, w/e. But the fact is, fiction does not equal reality. That is why it is called fiction.
There are many things I am disgusted by. There are many things that legitimately make me go into shut-down mode. These things can be themes in fiction. But they are not real. And I do my best to avoid these things. At the end of the day, it’s everyone’s responsibility to do this to the best of their ability. It is not really anyone else’s responsibility to look out for you on the internet. You can definitely ask people to tag things you don’t want to see, but they are not in charge of you or your well being. You can definitely create a safe space for you and others, but you cannot force others to abide by your exact morality when it comes to fictional matters. That all may sound harsh, but I honestly don’t think there’s another way to put it.
If something is actually against the law, even when presented in fiction, then absolutely go and file a report with an authoritative power that can do something about it. That shit doesn’t need to exist. But if it is not against the law, no matter how badly it upsets you, you technically cannot dictate what others create or consume in a fictional medium. You can offer criticism. You can speak out against it. You can have whatever opinion you have. But it’s not within anyone’s rights, unless if you are a member of authority, to dictate others.
I really do hate the slippery slope argument, but if we were to outlaw everything that was deemed problematic or toxic by everyone, we would eventually have literally 0 content, as everyone finds something problematic or toxic.
Fiction is intended to be many things, including a space for people to be able to explore things that would not go over well in reality.
I’m sorry, but saying that fiction does equal reality causes more harm than good. By saying this, you are making it harder for individuals that already have issues discerning fiction from reality to tell the difference between the two, as you are simply backing up the fallacy they are under the impression of for whatever reason. While it isn’t necessarily fair, the overwhelming majority of people can tell fiction apart from reality in most circumstances, and therefore, we cannot operate under the argument that fiction = reality, as it is simply not true.
Disclaimer: I am absolutely not saying that you have to be okay with anything you see in fiction. You are entitled to your own opinion and your right to express that opinion. All I am saying is that I wish that people would stop saying that fiction does equal reality.
“Congratulations – you just made a conversation about salad and hamburgers about the struggle of childbirth.”
TBH Parentfriends, I’m probably tired of looking at pictures of your kid every other day, so I just hid you from my Newsfeed, because what’s important to you isn’t all that important to me. Sorry, not sorry, no one’s feelings got hurt.
But if you start mommyjacking my posts, I will 100% make you cry into your keyboard.
#how unsatisfied are these people with parenthood that they have to validate themselves like this
wait….are any americans aware that the cia overthrew the democratically-elected premier of iran in 1953 because he wouldn’t concede to western oil demands….and how that coup was the reason for the shah’s return to power, the iranian revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorship…..like, america literally dissolved iranian democracy and no one knows about it???
No. No we don’t know about it.
Americans aren’t told this shit.
The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.
Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.
The only reason I knew about it is because there’s a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.
“All the Shah’s Men” by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.
!!!
I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people it’s insane.
She’s 60. She never heard of this.
As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.
He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods. Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.
And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”
And she just looked floored.
“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”
“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “
She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.
“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.
And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”
She lived through it.
American schools don’t teach you any of this sort of thing.
I can absolutely confirm. Public school education in South Carolina did not teach the realities of colonialism. It sure as hell didn’t teach us about racism. I had an AP Us History teacher named Ms. Outlaw. I was doing badly in school because of survivor stuff and trans stuff (in the 90’s in South fucking Carolina!!!!) and I was really feeling isolated. Being any stripe of queer just wasn’t spoken of, but I heard it was actually talked about in History of Minority Groups, so I signed up for the ELECTIVE class. The same woman that in my AP US History class framed the civil war as entirely economic and claimed that the sole purpose of the emancipation proclamation was to weaken the southern economy and thus help the north win the war–which TOTALLY WASN’T ABOUT SLAVERY–looked me dead in the fucking eye while acknowledging in the history of minority groups class that the civil war was, indeed, specifically about slavery. I was the only white kid in that class. That was my senior year of high-school and the internet was still not what it is today, so my awakening to the realities of white supremacy was slow and jerky, but it really started that day. Other things happened growing up that clued me in, but it wasn’t until the exact same teacher represented two diametrically opposed views of American history while making pointed eye contact with me that I picked up on what was obvious to every black student in that class.
Furthermore during my stint on a special forces ODA and in all the training leading up to it I learned all about SF’s history as being an instrument specifically for Cold-War era proxy warfare. That was our specific task before the war in Afghanistan and Iraq: to train indigenous people to fight our enemies in our stead, KNOWING that they would be abandoned once we were done with them, just like the Degar people (who we still call the Montagnards) in Vietnam. Most Americans don’t know about them in spite of a resettlement effort taken on by many Vietnam era special forces personnel to have them relocated to the united states (primarily in North Carolina).
Tldr; Americans are taught a very propagandistic version of history that focuses on “American exceptionalism” to the exclusion of major world events–especially ones that make us look bad.
I don’t blame anyone not from the US for not knowing how the US propaganda machine works. But we would not have so many proud police and military loving Americans if most of its people were educated of its atrocities. That doesn’t instill pride. Except in sadists, which will always exist. But white Americans in particular need to believe the are more worthy and better than others not like them. US needs to maintain that lie in all areas, including media and education. I learned about Iran but not until social theory in college. Not an accessible way of learning. This also contributes to the conflicts between the radical left, the liberal left and moderates, conservatives etc. radical left people have learned about American atrocities and benefits of living in America and conservatives and far right wing use those things to bolster our “superiority”. History is used as a political tool to be told to others in a way to benefit those in power. Which is horrendous.
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