In Search of the Happiness Max

$ivanolix: This much prettiness in one shot should be illegal Holy shit! Those are two beautiful people. There’s something a little freaky seeing them out of character, acting like normal people, who do not have even a fraction of their beauty. I mean, by conventional standards, of course, but COME ON. I feel like them touching is putting reality in danger.$

ivanolix:

This much prettiness in one shot should be illegal

Holy shit! Those are two beautiful people. There’s something a little freaky seeing them out of character, acting like normal people, who do not have even a fraction of their beauty. I mean, by conventional standards, of course, but COME ON.

I feel like them touching is putting reality in danger.

Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”

Imagine you are the guy who just walked into that Philosophy class and laid that shit down. Imagine the class full of students who have worked very hard and committed themselves and sacrificed to be here, students who have spent several years of their lives learning about this subject. Imagine now their feelings when you go to the head of the classroom with a smirk on your face and demand the professor give you an A for effort. Imagine now that they think you are a douchebag asshole, because they do, and because you are. You are a douchebag asshole because you are obviously so self-centered, arrogant, and completely ignorant of the world around you, that you thought you could walk into a high-level course with no background and no work and say something profoundly simplistic and totally unrelated and also everybody should congratulate you for having done this thing, so brave, so provocative.
[….]
You are not asking us a real question. You are simply illustrating, for all to see, your own ignorance. You are saying, “I have not considered the implications of the question I have just asked. I have not taken the time nor effort nor commitment to sit down and ask myself this question. Instead, I have come into your philosophy classroom/office/feminist blog and shat out my question with a smirk, because I believe that my two seconds of thought are worth more than your long-term analysis, because I believe I am worth more.”

“

—	Fugivitus: A few things to consider when you find a feminist blog (via absolutely-spiffing)

You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

“

—	Erin McKean, You Don’t Have to Be Pretty (via tited) Thank you. I wish more people believed this.

Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when you are standing right there, judging us on how our knees look in short skirts and how prominent our boobs are in a sweater and how much makeup we are or are not wearing.

Instead of us working harder on “love your body” and “find your inner beauty”, the rest of the world should be working harder on “stop telling women their bodies are a shameful place to live but that if they’re strong enough, they will learn to embrace that shame.”

This is my body. It’s not “beautiful”. I don’t “love it”. I don’t have to. I don’t have to have any strong feelings about my body. And whatever feelings I do have are not somehow invalid if they’re not glowing reviews.

“

—	Elyse Mofo, “Don’t Tell Me to Love My Body” This shit needs to be said more often. (via joydivisions) YES.

It’s Towel Day

Be fabulous, people… be prepared!

The ood one, though…

wilwheaton:

laughterkey:

sonicdork:

nprmusic:

poptech:

laughingsquid:

Teenage Girl Nonchalantly Plays Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ Guitar Solo

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

No big deal, just shreddin’.

“You can really shred that Eddie Van Halen solo, little girl. But can you down 8 lagers at once?” Alex Van Halen

GAHDDAM

WOW.

Please let her become a rock goddess. I would buy her albums.

Tell Me; Who’d you cast as me?

royharperme:

Bonus: Tell me who’d you cast as my love interest.

Double Bonus: Tell me who’d you cast as my best friend

Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.

Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.

In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:

The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.

“

—

[x] (via neighborly)

As a teacher, I give girls what I hope is a lot of attention. I don’t know if I give girls their fair share, but I aspire to, especially after noticing that boys are willing to use their greater share of teachers’ attention to get girls who they feel aren’t being quiet and docile enough punished. I have therefore acquired a reputation for “caring more about the girls.” This has had two marked results: Some straight boys have gotten more hostile toward me, and most girls have gotten more confident around me. This makes me think I’m doing something right.

Longer thoughts on how this phenomenon relates to sexual harassment in classrooms, if you’re interested: The girls figured out I won’t report them if they hit boys who are sexually harassing them, I’ll only report the boys. This led to an increase in how often girls got the last word and boys got smacked in my classes, and, also, to a DECREASE IN HOW OFTEN GIRLS GOT SEXUALLY HARASSED. The sexual harassers seem to have been depending on the sort of “equal blame” and “retaliation is never warranted” and “don’t hurt others’ feelings” perspectives so many schools try to instill in kids; the sexual harassers were usually the ones bringing me into the situation by saying, “Miss, she hit me! You should write her up!” Once they figured out I was only ever going to respond, “If you don’t treat girls like that, they won’t hit you,” the girls got more confident and the sexual harassers largely shut the fuck up.

In schools, fighting against sexual harassment is often punished exactly the same as, or more severely than, sexual harassment — a lot of discipline codes make no distinction between violence and violence in self-defence, and violence is ALWAYS the highest level of disciplinary infraction, whereas verbal sexual harassment rarely is. Sexual harassers, at least in the schools I’ve been in, rely heavily on GETTING GIRLS IN TROUBLE WITH HIGHER AUTHORITIES as a strategy of harassment — creating an external punishment that penalises girls for and therefore discourages girls from fighting back. Sexual harassers are willing to use their greater share of floorspace to ask to get girls who won’t date them punished. By and large, teachers do punish those girls when they swear or hit. Schools condition girls to ignore sexual harassment by punishing them when they speak up or fight back instead.

Once the sexual harassers in my classes understood that girls wouldn’t be punished for rejecting them, they backed off around me. And there started to be a flip in what conversations I get called into — girls are telling me when boys are being nasty (too loud and dominant), instead of boys telling me when girls are being uncooperative (louder and more dominant than boys think they should be).

(via torrentofbabies)

reblogging again for the wonderful commentary.

(via partysoft)

Holy crud, so glad I read this. Reblogging for other educators.

(via eupheme-butterfly)

As a girl who would not be shut up and would not tolerate teasing or abuse from boys in my class and was several times sent to such higher authorities for it, reading this is extremely, extremely vindicating. I was lucky, though, because being a particularly bright, advanced student for those grades, they generally took my side and I never got into any severe or lasting trouble. Again ,this was luck, and shouldn’t be the rule.

(via eruditechick)

I was going to write that exact last paragraph; WOW.

(via supersandys-space)

YES. THANK YOU SO MUCH. So much of my depression basically stems from the fact that I was bullied in school, essentially for fighting back. And I was demonised for it. *I* was sent to the headmaster, not the bullies. *I* was sent to a child psychologist, not the bullies. I was even forced to apologise to a bully for something I didn’t do because I stood up to her. And yes, that’s a ‘her’, but I think it’s part of the same thing: girls are not supposed to stand up for themselves.

Boys are told that the way to deal with bullies is to fight back. Girls are told that they can’t fight back, so it’s best to ignore them. But ignoring bullies does bugger all. And fighting back gets you in trouble. The only way to prove you’re in the right is to sit silently and endure. Which more often than not means that no one with authority notices what’s going on.

badgermoles:

alysanne:

sometimes I think about my own character development

#it’s shit someone should fire my writers

Mine is all over the place. My author should make up her mind what my role in this story is going to be. And maybe add a love interest. Everybody likes a love interest.

*whistles*