I really fucking hate it when something like the Romney/Rosen story goes down, because it pretty well guarantees I will spend the next ten days hating EVERYONE.

(Well, ok. Not everyone. But most of the commentariat.)

cabell:

There are deep class assumptions embedded in the way people are talking about the Instagram rollout because of the huge class divisions between iOS and Android users. Android phones can be purchased relatively cheaply and are available with low-price plans and other pricing options. This is not the case with iOS, which tends to be more expensive and more exclusive.

Excellent piece.  This is very similar to the discourse around the opening of Facebook to the public a few years ago (when people basically used “stranger danger” as code for “poor people”).

I’m still getting over realizing just how racist some of my “progressive” friends were back in Bloomington. We were talking about I-69 (which is a really complex issue, honestly) and one of them said, “Really, even if they used the old terrain route and upgraded 37, I don’t like it. It will make it too easy for a certain element to get here.“ 

erikais:

genderbitch:

lucypaw:

sanaa-tamir:

Today in FAIL: Ms. Magazine says there’s no such thing as Cis Privilege

stfuconservatives:

rubyvroom:

the whole article is really just.. ugh.

• Sexism is institutionalized at birth. As Asher Bauer explains in “Not Your Mom’s Trans 101,” “Let’s start at the beginning. A baby is born. The doctor says ‘It’s a boy’ or ‘It’s a girl’ based on the appearance of the child’s genitals. […] the child is then raised as whatever arbitrary gender the doctor saw fit to assign.” On the one hand, this is often the setup for trans identification later in life, with the individual realizing that her gender doesn’t match up with her biological sex (as designated by the doctor and social conventions that elide sex and gender). On the other hand, some argue that girls face sexism from birth while boys, even if they later identify as women, do not, signifying a fundamental difference in terms of privilege and upbringing between cisgender and trans women.
• Gender is socially constructed. Expounding on an idea most famously discussed by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, Laurie Penny writes, “Not a single person on this planet is born a woman. Becoming a woman, for those who willingly or unwillingly undertake the process, is torturous, magical, bewildering–and intensely political.” Trans women have to function in the same patriarchal culture cisgender women do, so it’s not a huge leap to say that all women can stand together against inequality. However, even the term “cisgender” is a contentious one, as it suggests ciswomen have privileges (by “being able to” conform to the sex/gender binary) that transwomen do not. According to Miska, “cisgender privilege” is a fundamental misnomer because “we do not have gender privilege to begin with.”

wait wait I think you must have made a series of really unfortunate errors here because it sounds like you’re suggesting that transwomen are more privileged than ciswomen. And you didn’t mean to say that, right? right? right?

“According to Miska, “cisgender privilege” is a fundamental misnomer because “we do not have gender privilege to begin with.”

No… no. OK just off the top of my head, here are some privileges I have as a cis woman over some trans* women:

• No body dysphoria regarding my secondary sexual characteristics (genitalia, breasts)
• No one ever questions me when I walk into a women’s bathroom or dressing room
• No one has ever questioned whether I’m a “real” woman
• As a straight woman, I am free to marry a cisgender man in any state in the US
• No one in my family has ever questioned my gender identity

And the list goes on and on. And being a woman does have some gender privileges. Men have WAY MORE of them, but we have some.

What is with the mainstream feminism transfails going on today???

-Jess

The quoting of Miska, a virulent transmisogynist (ie, radscum), by an article in Ms Magazine shows how liberal feminists have yet to take on the transmisogyny and transphobia in feminism.

Look at me not being surprised in the fucking least that cis liberal feminists (3rd wave and beyond) are still vile, still evil and still suckling at the blood tainted teat of trans misogyny like their previous wave sisters do.

Yep. But according to cis lesbians I know, the trans misogyny and racism of even 2nd-wavers, much less today’s feminists, is less important than celebrating their “progress” (for white cis women only). Cis feminists fail forever.

(via beanarie)

thesavagesalad:

PSA post to my fellow feminists

trans*women can’t appropriate a woman’s identity

why?

because they are women.

Maybe this needs repeating- but being a woman transcends your genitalia or your chromosomes. Being a woman is how you identify. That’s it. That’s all it takes to identify as a woman. If you know in your heart of hearts that you are a woman- that’s all it is.

So don’t be that douche bag that has the audacity to degrade a transwoman or demand her to prove her womanhood. She owes you no explanation. 

Now if you really are a feminist, you will defend her existence to the death and ensure that she always has a safe space and voice with in the movement.

(via cabell)

quelola:

nuestrahermana:

garconniere:

The Shirt by Shelley Niro, 2003.

Niro’s work consists of a connecting series of photographs that should be read together as a whole narrative. The images are set in a pastoral landscape, and each subsequent photograph offers an increasingly incisive statement on the colonization of the land that once belonged to aboriginal peoples.

Shelly Niro was born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1954. She is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Iroquois Confederacy, Turtle Clan, Six Nations Reserve. She is currently based in Brantford, Ontario, and works in a variety of media, including beadwork, painting, photography, and film. (via virtual museum)

[Image Description: Photoset of 7 photos. The first 5 depict the same Native woman wearing a white t-shirt blue jeans, aviator glasses and an American flag bandana holding her hair back. The white t-shirt has different words in each picture. The woman stands in a green field and there are mountains and buildings in the distance.

Font on each shirt:

Photo 1: This Shirt

Photo 2: My ancestors were annihilated, exterminated, murdered and massacred

Photo 3: They were lied to cheated tricked and and deceived

Photo 4: Attempts were made to assimilate colonize enslave and misplace them

Photo 5: And all’s I get was this shirt

The next photo shows the same woman without her shirt, bandana or glasses.

The last photo shows a white woman with red hair and red jeans wearing the glasses on her head, the bandana around her neck and the shirt that reads “And all’s I get is this shirt” standing were the Native woman was standing before.]

Damn! My first reaction to this was to laugh because of the last two photos. Sometimes, it’s easier to laugh and it’s necessary to laugh and then get angry. That woman in the last photo is so fucking coy and obnoxious and her stance and pose just legit had me cackling because it’s the epitome of the carefree white girl.

(via kahtiihma)

se-smith:

That split, says Chaske, is exactly why there should be a statewide vote on the issue. He says it would give the residents of the Standing Rock tribe a chance to officially weigh in on the debate. A positive vote, he says, will rebuke the NCAA and force it to stop what he considers overly punitive action against the university.

“They are speaking with two tongues,” he says. Chaske thinks the NCAA has been unfair to schools by granting waivers to some universities, but not others.

Because we all know that the majority should be allowed to decide whether something is offensive to a minority.

That’s a very valid point, but when the minority in question is also divided, I feel very uncomfortable wading in on the subject. 

That chick-fil-a flyer that’s been circulating Tumblr? Is a hoax. Not originally intended as a hoax, but it has essentially become one now that it’s being passed around as legit. 

Chick-Fil-A are still bastards.

That is all.

This style of writing and plotting is really frustrating. It’s not just that it is misogynist and that I like my pop culture to be interesting and dynamic and to not perpetuate hateful tropes about women, like that women are helpless and rely on big strong men in their lives to save them when they run into trouble. It also shows the limitations of the creators, who clearly can’t write female characters, are afraid of female characters, and deal with it by basically just not including them. There’s no effort to give women any kind of texture and depth in this show, which means that immediately half the viewers are going to have trouble finding someone they identify with.

Senator en route to pro-life rally stopped due to his refusal to let someone else control his body.

caesarindahood:

Why do the 300 Spartans get all the credit for Thermopylae, anyway?

A bunch of other Greeks were there…

And a lot of them stayed throughout the entire battle

700 Thespians under Demophilus, a contingent of Thebans, and even some Helots were all present at the battle’s end.

DAMN GOOD POINT.

Answer: because racism and classism have roots that go back THIS FUCKING FAR. And probably much, much further.