feral-mouth:

^Love of my life.

emilyswash:

[trigger warning for mention of sexual assault]

to the oklahoma lawmakers who will force all women to receive an ultrasound prier to an abortion:

why don’t you print out the ultrasound pictures out in a pastel frame? make me take them home and hang them on my wall as a souvenir of the night that is branded like red coals to flesh on my memory, the night when his hand pressed so hard against my shoulder blade i felt more intimacy with asphalt.

why don’t you knit the baby a sweater? make me take it out and smell it on the anniversary of this day for the rest of my life to remind me that i chose to be a murderer instead of bringing a child into this world where we kill people in the name of freedom but imprison people in the name of life. you could pass laws for that too, you know.

it’s bad enough that i can still see his handprints on my thighs but now i can see your probing eyes scraping across my cervix, tattooing my womb with shame. why don’t you send me a card every mother’s day to remind me of how wretched i am? sign it, “your friend at the state capital, making sure you know we actually do something all day with your tax dollars.”

look: i know it can get boring, between the [??] association breakfast and the oil and gas industry lunch and i know you need something to do between screwing up our election system and passing off your racism as an immigration bill, but i need a little more from you than a peace of paper.

i mean, if you really want to show me that you believe in faith, family, and freedom, then why don’t you come along for the ride? i could have used you that night, after the football game, him finally showing my attention, me grasping for acceptance. tell me i’m special so when he hands me the next drink i don’t look to the bottom of it for approval. tell me to scream louder so someone might find us. wrap me in a blanket when he’s done. take me home, my body a [??], my heart the grimy gym floor after the pep rally. give me the words to say to my parents when i come out of the bathroom with a plus sign on the stick, and he won’t even talk to me. the school hallway is a canyon. silence echoes in my skull, and i don’t know what to do. tell me what to do. sit with me at the clinic, the ticker plucking away at my innocence, give me the REVELATION that the blip on the screen is actually a baby. take me home when i change my mind, take me to the doctor every month, hold my hand in the delivery room. i will name him after you if you will help me do my homework when he’s crying in the next room. give me food stamps, pay my gas bills, put him in an after-school program where he learns he can sell my pain pills, have mercy on him when he goes to court, give me strength when they sentence him.

if you wanna play god, mister and missus law makers, if you want to write your bible on my organs, you better be there when i am down on my knees, pleading for relief from your morality.

youcanhaveitall:

julietburgess:

This is wonderful.

so beautiful, eloquent and succinct. anti-choicers everywhere need to hear this.

shit. shit. wow.

rosalarian:

I can’t seem to write anything even tangentially related to social justice anymore without panicking and deleting it because of the backlash, not from the right wing, but the left. I feel incredibly silenced by the social justice movement, despite believing in most of its causes. I have distanced myself from most of it. 

Maybe could we all be a bit nicer to each other, and use honey instead of vinegar all the time, especially when we’re trying to catch allies instead of kill flies. I see so many potential allies say “fuck it, these folks are jerks” to causes I believe in. And I think they have a right to. No cause is worth the mental anguish that many SJ crowds will put you through. I see so much frustration. I feel it, too.

Activists: wait until the anger leaves. You think you need the anger to drive you, but you don’t. It only blinds you so you can’t tell friends from enemies and lash out at anything around you that moves. It’s reactionary and destructive. Let the anger go away, but in its place will be passion. Love for your side that makes you want to grow your numbers, to be rational and focused and constructive. It lifts everybody up.

Only bullies tear others down to lift themselves up.

Keep calm and have civil conversations.

I agree to an extent. Many of the SJ Tumblr’s are pissed and usually lash out BECAUSE they’re simply tired of the rhetoric, plain and simple, though I myself can attest to simply not knowing about things like cultural appropriation or privilege until I followed many of these people and read their posts. Sure, people could be nicer, and I myself could do without much of the backlash I get from time to time when I slip up a bit, BUT I cannot tell someone else how to feel about my actions nor should I expect any slack. After all, those who are angry are most likely like that because they’re tired of being nice and patient with people who - metaphorically speaking - step all over their identity, even when they don’t intend to. On top of that, they’re really not our teachers, and I myself have to keep that in mind, before I go up to anyone on here and ask questions about who they are; it may seem innocent enough to some, but we don’t know the lives of the people, and it may be an incredibly uncomfortable and/or invasive question. But that’s apart from making a statement on SJ, which is almost always up for debate, being that everyone here is completely right in making themselves known.  So if anyone of my posts erases them and their experiences, then I would honestly expect no less than a backlash; I will be embarrassed, and possibly hurt, but I’d much rather learn in that fashion than continue to walk through life on top of others.

Perhaps this proves your point, but keep in mind I myself am trying to break my own silence

fuckyeahgenderstudies:

lipstick-feminists:

TW

writedrunk-editsober:

For years you hid your tampons between mattresses, cut your hair short, lowered your voice, collected ace bandages and baggy clothes. Small town talk stuck to your shoulders, you nervously shuffled around gas stations, never looked men in the eyes. We share unwanted wombs. While mine collects cobwebs, yours lies in a coffin in Nebraska.

This is the state that made you famous, handed movie scripts to Hilary Swank. Your murder was Oscar worthy. We are walking obituaries. Your hate crime headline already carved across my forehead, people look at me and see your delicate hands and absent adam’s apple.

Brother, I’m afraid to use the bathroom… (Walk in, head down, don’t look at another guy.) I’m afraid I’ll be discovered… (Don’t talk, dont stare, don’t piss too quickly.) Some thick armed man will call me a queer, tell me to show him my tits. Suddenly I’m thrown against faucets, spit in my face, workboot gutting my stomach. I see you on the movie screen and wonder if it’s my reflection. I watch them push you into the dirt and drag me into their car as they break our bodies in between our thighs.

Brother, did it hurt when you kissed her goodbye? Did you know you were breaking your promise when you told her you’d come back? Did your parents panic? Buy you a prom dress? Struggle over pronouns at family gatherings? And how long did it take your girlfriend to run her hands along your skin, soft as hers? Did she leave her eyes open?

We are carcasses. Untouched boxes of condoms. We are public secrets, playground jokes, and horror films. We are costumes, stuffing, binding and makeup. We aren’t real men to them. Invisible til we’re screaming. They don’t remember our names until they read them on our tombstones.

They exposed you. Decided you’re better off as splattered ink on newspaper. Used you as a warning for the rest of us. And there are days when it works. Sometimes I forget that sidewalks can be safe. Sometimes I confuse their shooting eyes for the bullet that met yours. Sometimes I imagine the phone call my mother would get. Can almost hear my sobbing friends. Smell the lillies on my casket. Touch my girlfriend’s black dress. But brother, I am trying to be brave.

youarenotyou:

What does it mean to be “productive”?

As someone who has struggled with life-long depression, and other problems that cause a depletion of spoons, one of the ways that I’ve shamed myself most is with this idea of productivity: feeling low when I believe I haven’t been productive enough. And I hear this a lot from other people too, especially people with disabilities.

The notion of productivity is rooted in capitalist (and, it follows, ableist) ideas about an individual’s value. It is important that we be “productive”, not only when we are at work, but at all times. And what does it mean to be productive? When we are hard on ourselves for not being productive enough, what do we mean? We can try to define what productivity means for ourselves on an individual level, but I don’t believe we can separate it from the aforementioned capitalist and ableist ideas. Especially for those of us struggling with disabilities, I think this is one of the biggest, most common, and frequently unchallenged ways of internalizing ableism and perpetuating it on ourselves and others.

Defining what productivity means might be easier if we look at what it isn’t. Sitting online all day, playing games, watching television, watching movies, sleeping, relaxing, doing anything passive – I’ve seen all of these things frequently branded as “unproductive” when people criticize themselves (or others) for how they use their non-working/unstructured time. Things that don’t have a clearly defined goal. Do you have a huge to-do list that doesn’t include taking time out of the day and being kind to yourself? Do you typically not cross off most of the things on that list, and then feel upset over it, like you’ve wasted your day?

Productivity, for you, might mean engaging in active hobbies or running errands. It might mean working non-stop at multiple jobs, constant research, having several projects on the go, organizing and initiating rallies, or conducting one workshop after another. Being “productive” never includes self care. I see many creative people who are hard on themselves for not producing enough, especially if their reason for not doing so involves mental health struggles. As if we are mini assembly lines. Subconsciously comparing ourselves to mass production factories, which we will never be able to imitate because of the limitations of being a single person.

Capitalism has seeped into our lives so deeply that we don’t even realize what we’re doing when we talk about wanting to be more productive or shame ourselves for not being productive enough. We forget to take time to relax and take care of ourselves because we are so concerned with meeting quotas in our heads for productivity. Do your self-care rituals stand in opposition to your ideas of what productivity looks like? Why isn’t it productive to take care of ourselves?

Let’s stop pushing ourselves beyond our limits. Let’s fight back against this notion of productivity, against the idea that our value lies in what we “get done” every day. Let’s start working on loving ourselves as we are and giving ourselves some breathing room.

creatrixtiara:

downlo:

(Inspired by the commentary on this post)

For the purposes of anti-racism struggles, that’s all you need to go by.

Yes, the term, “colored” is not normally associated with Asian people these days, but it was definitely used to label people of Asian descent in…

readnfight:

I think part of it also is that communities of color do things every day that should be considered revolutionary. They just aren’t huge spectacles. One of the most lasting legacies of the Black Panther Party, for example, was the free breakfast programs—but that’s not flashy so…

quelola:

[Image Description: A photo of me holding up a piece of paper and with a “bitch please” smirk on my face.]

Text on paper:

I’m a brown, queer, person with a disability, fat, happy on most days first generation college student (with 20,000+ in debt). I have faced barriers, obstacles, stares, negative b.s., being poor, being broke (because there is a difference) [Forgot to add: for my entire life].

I am not your 99%.

I am not the 1%.

I’m not even included! (Unless I force myself. But why should I have to?)