the idler wheel

The best way to dehumanize someone while claiming you’re not is to believe you are just the same. You erase their experiences and perspective, their struggles and obstacles, their unique way of having to deal with those things in a world that also erases them. With the words, ‘but humans are humans’ or the bs dramatics of ‘we all bleed red’ normal people can simply pretend that if we all did things the way they did, then everything would work out okay. But, yes, we all bleed red but you don’t treat a papercut the same way you treat a gash, you don’t treat an infected wound the same way you treat one that isn’t, you don’t treat a wound to the leg the same way you treat a wound to the gut. You are not acknowledging someone’s personhood when you ignore the very things that make their lives different than yours, and when you refuse to understand that their circumstances have given them their own perspective that is just as valid as yours. More valid in fact – their perspective about their experiences that you haven’t been through is far more valid than anything you could ever think about it.

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The danger of worldviews (Speaking when the world sleeps)

Truth bomb if I ever saw one.

(via ikenbot)

(Source: kiriamaya, via cuntcastle)

Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske took brain scans of heterosexual men while they looked at sexualised images of women wearing bikinis. She found that the part of their brains that became activated was pre-motor - areas that usually light up when people anticipate using tools. The men were reacting to the images as if the women were objects they were going to act on. Particularly shocking was the discovery that the participants who scored highest on tests of hostile sexism were those most likely to deactivate the part of the brain that considers other people’s intentions (the medial prefrontal cortex) while looking at the pictures. These men were responding to images of the women as if they were non-human.

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The Equality Illusion (via lesilencieux)

scary.

(via fuckyeahfeminists)

(Source: thoughtfulcynic, via cuntcastle)

It’s a monumental overask to expect women to be gentle with the egos of men who only feigned friendship in order to get laid.

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No One is Entitled to Sex: Why We Should Mock the Nice Guys of OkCupid (via peachersen)

Welp

(via callingoutbigotry)

(via flowerpiss)

I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been inextricably linked to their value as an individual, and that no matter how encouraging your parents were or how many positive female role models you had or how self-confident you feel, there is an ever-present pressure that creeps in from all sides, whispering in your ear that you are your body and your body defines you. A world where, from the time of pubescence on, you can feel the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze, and not just from your male peers but from teachers and sports coaches and the fathers of the children you baby-sit, people you’re supposed to respect and trust and look up to, and that first realization that you are being looked at in that way is the beginning of a self-consciousness that you will be unable to shake for the rest of your life.Even if they are never verbalized, the rules of bodily conduct for females become clear early on: when school administrators reprimand you for the inch of midriff that shows when you lift your hands straight in the air or youth group leaders tell you that the sight of your unintentional cleavage is what causes godly young men to fall, you learn that your body is dangerous and shameful and that it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that is acceptable to everyone else. You learn that your body is a topic of public debate that everyone is entitled to weigh in on, from a male classmate telling you that those jeans make your ass look huge to the male-dominated United States Congress dictating the parameters that rape must fall within to be considered legitimate. To be a woman, and to live life in a woman’s body, is to be held to a set of comically paradoxical standards that make you constantly second-guess yourself and jump through a million hoops in pursuit of an impossible perfection.

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Stop Catcalling Me  (via albinwonderland)

This is a fantastically clear and salient account of extremely confusing experiences which I have never been able to accurately verbalise. Amazing.

(via ideas-are-bulletpro0f)

(Source: lancyann, via daisiedee)

farahjoon:

• Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
• Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
• Aurora Levins Morales’s Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood
• bell hooks’ Cultural Criticism & Transformation
• Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
• Combahee River Collective Statement
• Dorothy Allison’s A Question of Class
• Judith Butler documentary
• Leslie Feinberg’s We Are All Works in Progress
• Paula Gunn Allen’s Who is Your Mother?: Red Roots of White Feminism
• R.W. Connell’s The Social Organization of Masculinity
• Sandra Lee Bartky’s Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power
• Sandra Cisneros’s Guadalupe the Sex Goddess
• Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? 
• Susan Bordo’s The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity

(Source: aloofshahbanou, via cuntcastle)

Okay, guy, so why do you feel like you want/need/deserve to settle down with a “pure” woman? I’m genuinely listening. “Oh, it’s because sluts are gross.” Too vague. Do better. “Well, their vaginas are real stretched out and big.” No. “Ummmmm, they probably have a bunch of diseases?” Easy fix! Setting aside the fact that plenty of women contract STIs from monogamous partners or during “safe sex,” it sounds like your real problem here is with illness, not sex. So I assume you’d be fine dating a promiscuous woman who practiced safe sex and happened to be STI-free? “No, because I want a girl who’s traditional and family-oriented.” Having sex doesn’t mean you don’t want to have a family. It just means that you want to have sex. “Yeah, but a slut is more likely to cheat on me.” Really? Then why do couples in the Bible Belt have such a high divorce rate? “The devil, I guess?” NOPE. “I just can’t stand the thought of her getting fucked by all those other guys.” So you’re about to have sex with a woman you’re attracted to, you really want to have sex with her, but all you can think about is her getting pounded by tons and tons of dicks? That sounds like an entirely different issue. “No! I just mean that I struggle with the same powerlessness and insecurity that all human beings do, so as a coping mechanism I take advantage of our culture’s patriarchal power structure and exorcize my feelings of worthlessness by perpetuating shame-based proprietary attitudes over women’s bodies. Basically I’m obsessed with controlling women’s lives because I can’t control my own.” Oh, honey. I know.

—Female ‘Purity’ Is Bullshit (via colourations)

(via daisiedee)

Seriously, if we believe a 14 year old is too immature to know how to take a pill, do we really think she’s adult enough to handle an unwanted pregnancy?

The truth is that the age restriction is completely arbitrary, tied only to our puritanical comfort levels. And listen, I get it; I think it’s fair to say that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of a 14 year old having sex. But here’s the thing - access to Plan B isn’t about keeping a 14 year old from having sex - by the time she gets to the pharmacy, that ship has sailed - it’s about keeping a 14 year old who has already had sex from getting pregnant. And despite what urban legend (or past embarrassing FDA memos) may tell you, making emergency contraception more available is not more likely to make young teens have sex - it will just make them less likely to end up pregnant.

We can’t let our discomfort with teen sex trump young people’s right to sexual and reproductive health and we can’t continue to let politics trump science. If we care about young women’s health and bodily autonomy and integrity, we’ll drop all age restrictions from emergency contraception. Anything less isn’t just illogical - it’s immoral.

—“Hey, FDA: Drop the Plan B Age Restriction,” my latest at The Nation (via jessicavalenti)

(via daisiedee)

You are worth more than your scars, so stop keeping track of your bruises. Instead, count the number of times you’ve turned yourself on.

—How to be a Rebel Girl by Ingrid on Bitchtopia.com (via lilgrrrlcreep)

(via deathbeforediet)