Tag: f

justsomeantifas:

Some have asked me to make a post regarding gay men being rounded up in Chechnya. Now, let me just clarify that details are very slim because the government is denying this (obviously) and there are a lot of posts on tumblr with misinformation. So I’ll do as best I can here:

  • An independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, and human rights activists have been providing this information. “In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders,” the Novaya Gazeta reported. 
  • According to the newspaper, dozens of men between the ages of 16 and 50 have mysteriously disappeared off the streets. Reports say that authorities aided in these roundups by posing as men looking for dates online. They also say that some of these men are well known religious leaders and/or popular faces on local television.
  • The Russian LGBT Network has set up a hotline for those seeking help and evacuation from the region. They told the media that they have received reports of what’s been happening in these prisons. “Gay people have been detained and rounded up and we are working to evacuate people from the camps and some have now left the region. Those who have escaped said they are detained in the same room and people are kept altogether, around 30 or 40. They are tortured with electric currents and heavily beaten, sometimes to death,” Svetlana Zakharova from the Russian LGBT network said.
  • A spokesman for Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s leader, is claiming that the reports are “absolute lies and disinformation,” and said that “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic. If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.” They are even claiming that these reports were nothing more than an April Fools joke because the Novaya Gazeta article was published on April 1st. The Kremlin is also denying any knowledge of these reports. 
  • The Human Rights Watch in Moscow told the media that they’ve gained information regarding these attacks that include torture, humiliation, and at least three reports of murder.
  • Note that it’s very difficult to get much information on this because almost no independent journalists or rights activists are able to work in the region due to restrictions. A journalist from the Novaya Gazeta has spoken out against Kadyrov before and was murdered only days later.
  • A Chechen activist who claims to work on human rights in the republic (and works on Kadyrov’s human rights council) has denied the claims. She told a Russian radio station “In our Chechen society, any person who respects our traditions and culture will hunt down this kind of person without any help from authorities, and do everything to make sure that this kind of person does not exist in our society.” 
  • Novaya Gazeta said they have been able to confirm their information with an “unprecedented large number of sources in the Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic, in the administration of the head of the republic, the FSB Department for Chechnya, the Chechen prosecutor’s office finally local LGBT activists.” They are also saying that a former military headquarters is the site of the camp. 

source. source. source. souce. source. and here’s the original Novaya Gazeta article. It is in Russian but it may be of interest to you if you can read it or your computer translates. 

miss-lee-lee-fan:

hmspoofta:

progressoftomorrow:

pink-blue-rose:

hmspoofta:

I was at Disneyland yesterday and when I walked into the Princess Fantasy Faire I welled up with tears as I witnessed a magical moment with the newest princess Elena of Avalor speaking in full Spanish to a small princess visiting from Latin America.

Representation matters.

Oooh she’s so pretty 😍

Me: crying at this beautiful magical moment…

Also me: I don’t understand what is being said except zapatos. They are talking about shoes and I’m crying again.

I guess I should’ve translated for the non-Spanish speakers.

Elena: “Your shoes are so sparkly! You know my grandmother always says a princess needs something sparkly so everyone knows that you are a princess and look; you have your crown, your dress and your shoes. Everything is so beautiful!”

@waltdisneyconfessionsrage @disneydiversity @disneyforprincesses

marciabrady:

Throughout the years, a lot of feminist critiques have panned Cinderella, including Emma Watson most recently, claiming that she’s a subservient doormat who lacks agency and waits for a man to save her throughout the course of her film. This criticism is null and void because Cinderella never once mentions wanting to find romantic love or wanting to meet the prince before attending the ball. This theory circulating, that many people have mindlessly reiterated, speculating that Cinderella planned to go to the ball to be saved by the prince is completely unfounded on the grounds that Cinderella ended up leaving the ball at midnight without so much as giving her name and, on screen, she verbally indicates that she had no idea the man she danced with the night prior was the prince at least three times. Ilene Woods, the original voice actress of Cinderella who had a lot of input into the development of the character, stated, “[Cinderella] was kind of spunky. She accepted life as it was and went after things she wanted. I think she was a spirited girl. I don’t think she needed the prince. I think she wanted to go to the ball and that was it at the moment. Then the prince wanted her and vice versa.”

equagga:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

Being poor is just a series of emergencies.

Emergencies really do crop up more often for poor people. Necessities, like vacuum cleaners or phones or bedding or shoes, need replacement or repair more often when you only buy the cheapest possible option.

Poor people’s health tends to be compromised by cheap, unhealthy food; stress; being around lots of similarly-poor contagious sick people who can’t afford to stay home or get treatment; inadequate healthcare; and often, hazardous and/or demanding work conditions.

So we get sick more. On top of that, many people are poor specifically because of disability. All of that is expensive – even if you just allow your health to deteriorate, eventually you can’t work, which is – say it with me – expensive.

When you’re poor, even the cheapest (most temporary) solution for an emergency often breaks the bank. Unexpected expenses can be devastating. People who aren’t poor don’t realize that an urgent expense of thirty dollars can mean not eating for a week. Poor people who try to save find our savings slipping away as emergency after emergency happens.

I don’t think people who’ve never been poor realise what it’s like. It’s not that we’re terrible at budgeting, it’s that even the most perfect budget breaks under the weight of the basic maths: we do not have enough resources.

Cos we’re fucking poor.

People who aren’t poor also have different ideas of what an emergency constitutes. The AC breaking in the middle of summer isn’t an emergency when it’s in the budget to just go buy a new one the same afternoon without worrying about how it’ll affect your grocery money; having to take two days off from work because you’re running a bad fever isn’t an emergency when you have paid sick leave.

So it’s no wonder the well off people of the world don’t get it when a low income person is stressed over something breaking or a minor illness. I know people for whom a crashed car – as long as no one was hurt – would just be ‘damn it I liked that car and now I gotta borrow my wife’s’ and I know people for whom it would be ‘I can’t afford to have this fixed but I can’t get to work if I don’t get it fixed and I can’t get it fixed if I don’t go to work hahhaha time to indebt myself to family members who I desperately wish I didn’t even have to interact with because they’re the only ones who can give me rides or loan me money.’

Two very different worlds.

systlin:

kittyknowsthings:

mszombi:

rabbittrabbitt:

taavot:

remember being little and thinking dandelions were fun or a pretty color or something and every adult in an 80 mile radius wouldn’t let you say that without screaming ITS A WEED

also like:
  • dandelions are edible, easy to grow, and are rich in vitamins a, c, k, beta-carotene, calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium
  • dandelions can be made into wine, tea, soft drinks, and a coffee substitute
  • they are used in herbal remedies to treat liver and digestive problems and as a diuretic
  • they’re good for bees!
  • they make good companion plants for various herbs and tomatoes; their long taproot helps bring up nutrients in the soil and they release ethylene gas which ripens fruit
  • dandelions secrete latex which means they can be used to make natural rubber 
  • they make great flower crowns 

Why ARE they considered a weed? They’re a good flower? Who decided they were bad? =(

You can also make beautiful jelly from the blossoms!

They’re considered weeds because they were a poor person resource and not having them was a status symbol.

Let’s back up.

In Europe dating back to the 1500’s and even earlier, you could only have immaculate manicured lawns if you had just pots of money and were able to own land. So, rich nobility had swaths of land, and they demonstrated their wealth and power by hiring people to physically cut the grass and keep their gardens and dig weeds out of the turf by hand. It was a demonstration of money and power. It said “I can afford to have eight people employed full time just to dig things that aren’t grass out of my grass. I can afford to have all of this land doing nothing. It’s not producing food. People don’t farm it or live on it. I can afford to just grow grass, and have someone tend to that wholly useless crop.”

Fast forward a few hundred years. Europeans come to America. Many of them are from the poorer classes in Europe. Many have never owned land before, and now all of a sudden they can (because they stole it from the Native Americans but that’s a whole other rant.)

Now, at first you see little cottage gardens like the lower classes in Europe always had around their homes; places where they grew food and herbs and kept chickens or other livestock. Dandelions were welcome here; they were eaten and brewed into wine and used for medicine, just as they’d been for centuries.

But then people start making a little money, and we have the whole phenomenon of people who can demonstrate that they are Moving Up In The World by buying all of their food and medicine, just like the old landed gentry back in the Old Country. So they do. What goes in the place of those cottage gardens? Why, the same thing that went in the place of productive land back in the Earl of Chatsworth’s front lawn; a lawn.

So. Dandelions were a symbol. They were a throwback to the old days. They were a sign that you were somehow less prosperous than your neighbors, or lazier. (A Mortal Sin in America.) But, many Americans work, and can’t afford to hire a gardener just to grub dandelions out of the yard with a trowel all day.

Enter the lawn care industry, which began to market a dizzying array of poisons and fertilizers aimed at making your lawn a sterile moonscape where only grass grew with minimum effort from the homeowner. This continues to this day and is a multibillion dollar industry that has huge negative impacts on the environment and human health, but we can’t seem to shake that old ideal of a manicured lawn.

We pour water on deserts and poison on native wildflowers to attain it. We expose our children to poisons. We poison pollinators and pets. The days where we recognized a well kept lawn as a symbol of aristocratic leisure are gone, but we’ve been successfully fed a lie that some dandelions and chickweed are Bad by the lawn care industry in their ads for decades. They, obviously, want to keep it going because they’re making fat $$$$$$$ off of us.

THAT’S why dandelions are viewed as weeds.

Also yeah dandelions are really good for bees, and beloved by native bees and honeybees alike. So please, leave them blooming!! You can support bees and do your bit to smash capitalistic exploitation of the working class and the environment all in one go!

whiterabbitpoetry:

cutiequeercris:

queerbabbe:

If you want to know what it’s like being trans just imagine yourself exactly as you are but everyone else sees you as someone else and if you correct them they may kill you.

this this this. honetly like we need to reframe the entire discussion around trans issues becuse the problem is not trans people, it eeryone else. young trans kids dont get bullied bc theyre trans they get bullied bc other people teach their shitty kids to hate trans people

Re-blogging at break-knuckle speed.