Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
A male colleague was making fun of the #metoo movement a few days ago, and many more (I’m one of 5 women in a department of 200 men) joined in. So I raised my voice and said I was glad women were speaking up about sexual harassment and assault and that I hoped that everyone who perpetuated this toxic behavior got taken down.
“Yeah but it’s a trend now, lots of them are just saying it for their 15 minutes of fame.” He then continued to say that he didn’t know anyone who had been harassed or any man who had done it.
I asked him if he had a daughter. He did. I asked him how old she was. She was was 17. I told him I’d bet my rent money that his daughter had experienced sexual harassment.
“That’s impossible.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Well then, do it.”
The next day, he came in the office with five bouquets of flowers for all the women in our department, including me. He publicly apologized for making fun of sexual harassment and for making our lives harder by doing so. He said that he simply hadn’t known how widespread it was. Apparently, his daughter deals with it very regularly. She hadn’t told him because of the way he spoke about assault cases that were on the news. She thought he’d think less of her if she’d mention it. It was her idea that he should make a public announcement. He said he felt like a bad father.
I said: “You were. Same goes for everyone who laughed with you. Be better, now you know better. And educate other men that still think the same way you did yesterday. And next time someone tells you about an experience they have, don’t automatically assume that because you haven’t seen it, it’s not true. That kind of willful ignorance is why we still deal with this shit.”
He also offered to pay my rent as that was part of the bet, but I told him I’d rather have him put effort in being a person his daughter and wife could be proud of.
In conversation the other day my mom stopped and asked my dad about what percentage of women he thought had experienced sexual harassment. He said about 20-30% maybe. My mom told him that both of us had been harassed multiple times at work (same goes for both of her sisters) and that she had actually been assaulted by a groper on a public bus. I have never seen anyone’s face go slack so quickly before as he realized that literally every woman in his family had experienced this. And while I’m glad he believed us and has changed his view on that subject I still can’t shake the frustration, the anger, that it required being sat down and spoonfed these incidents that we didn’t particularly wanted to relive. This is something that women have been saying for years, but men just never listen. Not even when they’re forced to sit in mandatory harassment in the workplace training seminars.
oh my god? the x files-fandom was the fandom that invented the word ‘shipping’? JESUS CHRIST I LOVE Y’ALL
Yes, back in the early days, there were two camps of fans: “Relationshippers” (people all about the MSR) and the “NoRomos” (people all about the platonic partnership.) Relationshippers was eventually shortened to “shippers.”
The X-Files popularity just happened to parallel the birth of the internet. Philes took it by storm with the creation of fan forums, chat groups, and hundreds of websites devoted to the show, characters, and the actors. :)
The X-Files fandom also coined the term UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension) as a fanfic descriptor. :D Fandom history is pretty neat.
fruck man
Man X-Files was my intro to fandom and fic and it shaped me so much
You know this post?
It’s true! But the corollary is, “And if not Star Trek, probably X-Files.”
For the last decade or so, I’ve been routinely attending a ride-on lawnmower race. I’ve always wanted to participate, but the high cost of used mowers is better spent on more practical vehicles, like literally anything else. Sometimes, though, the universe sends you a message. And in my case, that message came in the form of an awkward leg of a huge trade-in scam.
Picture, if you will, the humble redneck. They await the approach of big, fast domestic mowers. John Deeres, Cub Cadets, even weird modified Chinese stuff they looted from Aliexpress. There is jubilance, but that soon comes to an awkward hush. An unfamiliar engine note approaches.
My International 1480 combine harvester, all ten tons of it, is barrelling down the highway at a clip somewhere between “tepid” and “jaunty.” Even though I have shown up for a race, I am sandbagging a little bit, making sure that the bets get settled against my vehicle before I show them the might of a fully operational monster such as mine.
Technically, there is no violation. I had looked at the rulebook from every angle in the previous year: it has the correct number of wheels, the proper agricultural intent, and with precise work on the tiller, it can even (poorly) mow a suburban lawn. Is it modified? Oh yes, yes indeed, but I see the nitrous bottles poking out from the rows of Kubotas at the starting line.
And when I leave the starting line, it is a thing of beauty. At least for a few milliseconds. It seems that the wizards at International Harvester simply did not comprehend of a situation in which the frame of their combine would be launched into the air by means of one thousand eight hundred foot-pounds of supercharger-bolstered torque. I had erroneously believed that the loose soil of the rural community would let the wheels dip in, but now I am facing directly into the sky, having twelve o’ clocked hard on my wheelie, shooting flames from my exhaust and whirling vertical blades of death towards the grandstand.
It’s not about whether you win or lose. Sometimes it’s about how many pages you add to the rulebook.
“It’s not about whether you win or lose. Sometimes it’s about how many pages you add to the rulebook. “
I am but a mild-mannered urban being and have no idea what happened in this story, but with all the Gods as my witness I am getting the above text put on a plaque and hanging it in my living room.
“In just six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes in a year. (x)
I don’t care how many times I see this I will always reblog it
Stop spending money on war and lies and start spending it on ways to make this planet better.
I saw someone’s argument against trying to stop global warming and it was literally “What if global warming is fake and we make the world a better place for no reason?”
Gentleness is not weak, it is very strong. When you hold an infant, you must be gentle but you must also be firm. You cannot be weak or you will drop and harm the baby.
Gentleness is focused. When we are absent-minded or inattentive, we can be hurtful and damaging. It takes presence and awareness to be gentle.
At the same time, gentleness allows us to be relaxed and humorous, authentic without tension and contrivance.
Practice your gentleness.
Be gentle towards yourself. Be gentle towards nature. Be gentle towards other people.
