“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”—
Ruth Hubbard, “
The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’
“
(via
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Yes.
(via geardrops)
(via pancake-angst)
I don’t have a hard time believing this.
Crows are incredibly smart, and are not praised enough for the fact they can mimic human voices.
(Source: politicalmachine, via starfleetrambo)
8 Things Autistic People Want You To Know
1. Autism is a fundamental part of who we are and how we experience the world and it cannot be separated from who we are as people. Autism is not something which is clearly separated from our identities and our personalities - it’s something which affects every aspect of how we think about, experience and interact with the world around us. Autism isn’t something we have or something we’re suffering from, it’s something we are. For the vast majority of autistic people, autism is a part of our identity which means that despite common belief most of us prefer to be called “autistic” as opposed to “people with autism.” Do not tell us that we only have value if we can separate our identities and our personalities from autism.
2. The vast majority of autistic people do not want a cure, we want acceptance and accommodations. Do not put your time and money into researching how to cure autism and how to prevent it, put time and money into accommodating and accepting autistic people. We do not wish to become neurotypical, we wish to change society so that we can be accommodated, accepted and included as autistic people. Our goal isn’t to become as close to neurotypical as possible, it is to get the opportunity to live happy, fulfilling lives as autistic people. It is society that needs to chance, not us.
3. We do not support Autism Speaks or their campaign #LightItUpBlue and neither should you. If you want to support autistic people, check out ASAN or Autism Women’s Network instead. If you don’t know why autistic people don’t support Autism Speaks, check out the many resources linked in this post.
4. Functioning labels are at best inaccurate and at worst actively harmful. Functioning labels (claiming that some autistic people are “high-functioning” while others are “low-functioning”) do more harm than good, not just because they aren’t able to give you an accurate impression of what supports an individual autistic person needs but because they’re mainly used to either silence or invalidate autistic people. Autistic people who speak up about the issues concerning them are labelled “high-functioning” to invalidate what they have to say as being inaccurate and irrelevant for other autistic people and so-called “low-functioning” autistic people are being silenced and spoken over because they are written off as too ‘low-functioning’ to have nuanced, relevant opinions or even communicate at all. Instead of forcing autistic people into one of two boxes, name the specific issues or strengths that you are referring to when you’re calling them low-functioning or high-functioning. Are they non-verbal? Say that instead of calling them low-functioning. Are they able to manage a job? Say that instead of calling them high-functioning.
5. Non-verbal autistic people can and do learn to communicate using other communication forms than verbal speech and they’re all individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, wants and opinions. You do not get to speak on behalf of non-verbal autistic people. You do not get to assume that you know exactly what they think, want and feel, especially not when you have never made any effort to communicate with any of them. Instead of assuming that you know what non-verbal autistic people think and feel, try listening to what they have to say by reading the words of some non-verbal autistic people such as @lysikan or Amy Sequenzia or Emma Zurcher-Long.
6. Applied Behavior Analysis, the most widespread and well-known therapy for autistic children, does more harm than good. The goal of ABA therapy is to train and force autistic people into hiding their autistic traits by all means possible as if passing for neurotypical should be the goal of all autistic people regardless of what consequences it might have for their general well-being and their mental health. If you don’t see why that is a problem, check out this masterpost by @neurowonderful.
7. People diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome are just as autistic as people diagnosed with other variants of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Aspergers is autism and to emphasize this, aspergers and other variants of autism have been united under a broader diagnosis called “autism spectrum disorder” in the DSM-5, Back when aspergers was a separate diagnosis, the only difference between whether you got diagnosed with aspergers or autism was whether you spoke before you were three years old - something which says approximately nothing about your struggles and abilities later in life. The common misconception that aspergers and autism is two different things is just that - a misconception.
8. If you want to learn more about autism, listen to autistic people - not our parents, our siblings, our therapists our or caregivers. Autistic people are the ones who know the most about being autistic, so if you want to learn about autism we’re the ones you should ask. If you want to learn more about the different aspects of autism, @neurowonderful‘s youtube series “Ask An Autistic” is a good place to start. Here is an index over all the episodes so that you can easily find the topic you want to learn about. You can also visit @askanautistic where autistic people are ready to answer whatever questions you may have about autism.
Please reblog this post. It’s time tumblr starts listening to autistic people.
April is autism awareness month and this post is here to counter some of the many misconceptions people have about autism and what it means to be an ally to autistic people. This April, make an effort to listen to autistic people and to boost our voices - you can start by sharing this post with your followers.
(via bonehandledknife)
PSA
Reading up on sea witch spells and seeing people suggest putting offerings in bottles and letting the sea carry then away.
This upsets me.
It’s littering. Please leave your offerings on something that’s not harmful to the environment. A sea shell, rock or even just on the beach. Please don’t use anything that could cause harm to the ocean or its inhabitants. Thank you!
Not to hijack, but all offerings in natural spaces should be planned to be safe for the environment it’s going into. This is why I’m partial to offerings of water or other consumable fluids–if it’s safe to go in my belly, it’s probably safe to pour over some plants.
Yes. Stop telling people to bury things in jars, particularly . Bury things in (unbleached) paper towels, or the insides of bell peppers. And don’t bury things that won’t degrade. There are so many ways to do witchcraft that doesn’t involve burying things that won’t decompose!! If you can, opt to recycle the item, or better yet, just change out all your spell ingredients for stuff that is eco-friendly and able to rot if buried. Srsly.
THANK YOU!
to add: making bowls or balls of ice to bury or to be carried awayby the sea. Use unbleached paper towels or banana peels(if it’s safe) to write your spell on, etc. There are many safe ways to do magic without littering.
You can also use cabbage leaves and cotton kitchen string in place of a jar, or write your spell on a piece of un-coated (like not metallic, etc.) paper and fold it into an origami creature because the paper will degrade
Eco friendly witchery tips. :)
*GESTICULATES LOUDLY AT THIS ENTIRE POST*
Always reblog eco friendly witch tips and tricks
(via opalhonors)
“When Shelley’s corpse washed ashore, a friend identified it by a copy of Keats’s 1820 volume in the coat pocket, which he knew Shelley had taken with him. Then, after cremation in which Shelley’s heart, hardened by calcium, did not burn, this same friend snatched it from the embers and presented it to Mary Shelley, who kept it thereafter in her desk, wrapped in a copy of ‘Adonais.”
Here’s your morbid literary fact of the day.
jesus christ, i will never be this goth.
Mary Shelley’s father taught her to spell her name by taking her to the graveyard and having her trace the letters on her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gravestone.
NO ONE will ever be as goth.
didnt she also have sex on said grave
She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave yes
… that’s it we can all go home, peak goth was achieved before we even started.
JSTOR confirms it: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177447
Mary Freaking Shelley is None More Goth personified.
@mama-germany Achieve maximum goth
If I fail to reblog this, assume I’m stuck in my crypt, and someone needs to come help me.
She also wrote a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel focusing on the extinction of the human race and the meaninglessness of existence. In 1826.
Oh, and this isn’t especially goth, but my God, I respect her for this:
In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel’s lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as man and wife.[126][note 13] With the help of [American actor John Howard] Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple.[127]
The more I learn about Mary Shelley the more I love her
I mean makes sense that she was supportive of her non-straight friends because like she and her husband had an open relation ships and he definitely slept with other men (Lord Byron) and there’s a decent chance that Mary Shelley may have at the very least kissed other women
So she was an LGBT ally icon as well as the Mother of Science Fiction.
Adding her to my list of heroes.
(also @garrettauthor sorry I keep tagging you, but I feel you’d like this.)
Oh my god do I ever like this.
(Source: raecupcake-blog, via interstellarvagabond)
Dear Fellow Writers,
Not everyone is going to like what you write. Some people are going to have problems with decisions you make about characters, development, plot, and so on…they’ll say, ‘oh you should have done this or that, blah blah’ - and guess what? That’s okay.
We’re all different. We make different decisions and we have different preferences. That doesn’t mean that you should stop writing. For the love of God, keep at it! You’re never gonna please everybody all the time. That’s just plain impossible. But if at the end of the day you can look at your book and actually feel happy about the decisions you made then that’s what really matters.
Write a story that makes YOU happy. Think of all those endings that you liked best, the characters that you cherished the most and consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, someone else in this great big wide world is going to love them just as much as you do. I mean statistically, someone has to, right? A kindred soul (literary soul) that likes all the same cheesy tropes you do, and the sappy sugary sweet couples, or bad ass awesome rad characters with devils on their shoulders - they’re gonna love it. And they’re waiting for it. They’ve been waiting for your book for a long time. So you can do it. Stop worrying about what is wrong with your story and focus on what is right. You can do this.
Go write your heart out.
Pedophiles are evil. No discourse, no debate, no further questions. You get off to ruining children’s lives. Die. No excuses.
(Source: reparationrock, via volcanicsands)
“Everyone thinks he’s mentally ill but he actually just has superpowers.”
Okay, but like, what if both? Can we get a superhero with a mental illness depicted in a nominally positive way? That’s not just a cheap plot twist? Is that really too much to ask?
And not the whole “I’m psychotic and I could lose control of my powers at any moment” shit. I’m sick of that.
How about “I’m psychotic, but my telepathy helps a lot. If I think I’m hallucinating, my friends can let me see what they see and hear what they hear to keep me grounded in reality.”
Or you know, maybe someone whose mental illness and superpowers are unrelated. A speedster with depression who knows they /could/ clean their apartment in under four seconds, but would rather just watch Netflix and eat chocolate. A super strong hero who also has ocd and keeps rearranging their furniture, and sure it’s physically easy, but it’s still a pain.
Like, literally just in the few minutes it took me to write this post, I probably already came up with a good 30 character concepts. It’s not that hard, as long as you like, you know, think of mentally ill people as people and not plot devices.
“think of mentally ill people as people and not plot devices”
Yes please!Exactly this.
(via sigmabunny)
I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-Nazi ones, which is great, but I felt like we needed one to show our support for the Jewish community.
all you goyim I follow - I see you reblogging this and it warms me.
(via pancake-angst)