December 2011
On the discussion surrounding unmarried Black women
“My question is: why do people get to collectively comment on my body, my sex, my family, my choices, and my life circumstances? It’s just not fair. The answer: the preoccupation with the unmarried Black woman is part of a larger history and tradition of the hypervisibility of the Black female body. Our bodies, lives, love and labor are always on display as a spectacle for public debate, open for public inspection and consumption (you better believe that people are getting paid for the publication, distribution and sale of these books in addition to “expert” appearances on television).”
—Taja Lindley, Didn’t You Forget Me? A Queer Black Feminist’s Analysis of the Black Marriage Debate
Things I have realized, one day into staying with my parents during a month-long break
1. My (future) kids will be raised in a gender and sex positive household.
2. My (future) kids will be told that they are capable. I will not tell them that they are special, and I will not tell them that they are worthless because of their sex.
3. My (future) kids will be told that they should take their time to explore their identities and what they want from life.
4. I don’t want to get married, but I’m not a stickler about that.
5. If I do get married, the wedding will be either a) an elopement, or b) somewhere far, far away from where my parents and their friends live.
6. If I do get married, I will need to live far away from my parents.
7. If I don’t get married but have a life partner, I will need to live far away from my parents.
8. One of these days, I should tell them about the fact I’m queer. But I probably won’t because I can masquerade as heteronormative, and there is no point in upsetting my extremely conservative and traditional Chinese parents unless my life partner is not a man.
9. No matter what I do, I will always take care of my body and make sure that I am strong.
10. I will never stop questioning the status quo and I will not be happy with complacency.
“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”
—Christopher Hitchens
The Holzbach Viewpoint: “Furthermore the comical aspect of the quote isn’t that Ron Paul has... →
alexholzbach.tumblr.com
“Furthermore the comical aspect of the quote isn’t that Ron Paul has said or endorsed racist statements (because racism is not and never has been funny), it’s this magical belief that this special breed of all-knowing, all-seeing humans known as libertarians cannot be racist.”
Libertarians can’t be racist. It’s against the very definition; if you’re racist, you can’t be a real libertarian. And if you’re a real libertarian, you can’t be a racist.
Libertarians believe in personal liberties and rights, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, religious/political affiliations, etc. By hating a group (in this case, a specific race) as a whole, you aren’t seeing those people as individuals but rather as a collective group - breaking the cornerstone axiom of libertarianism.
Some people are racist. Some self-proclaimed libertarians are racist. But those people, by the very definition of the word, cannot be true libertarians. It isn’t possible.
In what suspended reality are these dipshits living? Oh wait, it’s called white privilege. My bad.
“Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism, because racism is a collectivist idea that you put people in categories. You say, well blacks belong here, and whites here, and women and gays here. Libertarians do not say, ‘you have rights because you are a minority or majority’.. they say you have rights because you are an individual!”
—
Ron Paul (via girlygirlemc)
I may have already posted this, but if I did, it’s still good the second time around.
(via hipsterlibertarian)
Someone please tell me this is a joke. This must be one of those jokes (such as post-racial, which Ron Paul references) that causes most people of color to burst into laughter upon hearing because the only other option is to cry. Why is it that in the U.S., the education on American history is so lacking that people do not understand the definition and history of racism?
In California, Indian Tribes With Casino Money Cast Off Members →
nytimes.com
An exercise in how even the most highly-regarded newspaper will miss the point when it comes to race and publish a shit article on its front page. I think my two favorite parts are the headline and the ending quote.
On body image, thinspiration and fitspiration
First, there was thinspiration, and now it’s been rebranded as fitspiration. Fitspiration would imply inspiration from fitness, but a quick search on Tumblr quickly knocks that idea down: “fitness” blogs don’t post stats of the cholesterol level/mile time/resting heart rate sort or images of amazing physical feats, but rather, they post stats of the weight lost/calories eaten sort and images of thinness.
I get it. I know how hard it can be the resist what the magazines tell us. “If you eat right and exercise, you can be thin because you’ll be fit!” their covers scream every month. Once upon a time, I believed them, and I borderlined on an eating disorder as I strove to look “fit” and thin. Being thin is touted as the solution to everything: to your low self-esteem, to why guys don’t find you attractive, to all your problems. Being thin will make you happy. The message is simple and powerful, yet it couldn’t be further from the truth. Being thin has nothing to do with how happy you are. I kept telling myself that once I hit my goal weight, I would magically be happy and all the guys would find me attractive and my problems would be better because the implication was that my worth was derived from my looks. But the truth was that I had never been more miserable as I ate less and less and exercised more and more.
Unfortunately, so few people realize this. Both men and women are been seduced by this crock of bullshit.
For women, not only do we tear our own bodies apart, but we tear down the bodies of other women. “Oh, she’s not fit because she doesn’t have visible muscle tone! She’s not fit because she’s not thin! She doesn’t have a good body because (insert some bullshit reason)!” And of course, there is the well-meaning “Real women have curves” retort. No, real women have bodies. Real women have bodies that reflect their experiences, their struggles, their lives. Real women have unique bodies that reflect their unique stories. Let’s respect that.
For men, the unrealistic expectation of what women’s bodies are like has emerged from all of the media representation of women’s bodies. Of all the men who have seen me naked, only two have not said some variation of “You’d be hotter if you lost some weight” to me. Both men who did not say such bullshit to me were surprised when I was more than willing to have sex with the lights on and on top of the covers; when I asked why they were shocked, they gave me the same response: All of my past girlfriends hid their bodies. All of my past girlfriends insisted that the lights be off and that we be under the covers so I wouldn’t see their bodies. All of my past girlfriends were ashamed of the way they looked.
Fit is not thin. Thin is not happiness. Happiness can only come from a place of self-realization. Although fitness (but not thinness) helps with that, it is not the answer. And above all, a woman’s worth is not derived from her looks.
It is the normalization of pathology: if you’re not constantly beating yourself up about your weight, if you’re not constantly thinking about or trying to diet, then you are somehow not a woman in today’s society. If you do not have an eating disorder or disordered eating, you are not a typical woman. Hating your body (and others’ bodies) and not recognizing its amazing qualities is part of the experience of growing up. Focusing all of your energies on how you look and not on your emotional and intellectual development is what “real” women do and those who don’t aren’t “real” women.
We see our bodies and the bodies of other women as objects, and for that matter, public objects. It is our “right” to express our opinions, no matter how hurtful, on women’s bodies. That is fucked up.
“Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It is a sort of crime against childhood.”
—Richard Dawkins
“Imagine, if you will, a man who, as Speaker of the House, orchestrates the impeachment of a President for an adulterous affair with a White House aide twenty-six years his junior while he himself is conducting an adulterous affair with a congressional aide twenty-two years his junior, having earlier left the first of his three wives while she was hospitalized with cancer. Imagine a man who attributes these behaviors to “how passionately I felt about this country.” Imagine a man who, told he can not sit in a front section of Air Force One, shuts down the government. Imagine a man who becomes the only House Speaker ever to be disciplined for ethics violations. Imagine a man who, in a country just staggering out of the worst recession of the past fifty years and facing the threat of worldwide economic collapse, proposes to hire small children to work as janitors, mopping floors and cleaning toilets in their schools (or their orphanages, perhaps). Imagine that man as Commander-in-Chief.”
—Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
“To be chemically depressed is like having a monster in your brain trying to take it over. The monster is never dead, but you can keep it chained in the corner by taking certain steps. Sometimes it tries especially hard to get loose. And even for the most well-managed loon, sometimes it does break free. When that happens, it changes your opinions. Things you believed to be true just the day before – that life was worth living, that there was hope for things to get better, that you are not extremely obese, evaporate as the monster sinks its tentacles into your mind. You literally lose track of ‘you’, and with it your ability to realize that the monster is lying to you.”
—JT Eberhard
