Tag: signal boost

Here’s the ‘small protest’ Trump says he didn’t see in Pittsburgh

seandotpolitics:

From all appearances, the president and first lady Melania Trump were warmly welcomed by Rabbi Jeffrey Myers — unlike the mayor, the county administrator, the governor, several tens of thousands of people who signed an open letter telling Trump he was “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism,” and many hundreds of residents who staged a decidedly not-small protest a few blocks from his motorcade.

“This didn’t happen in a vacuum,” said Ardon Shorr, one of about 100 people who had jammed a street corner several blocks from the synagogue an hour before Trump’s plane landed. “There is a growing trend of white nationalism. And that has been enabled by Trump, who traffics in the kind of conspiracy theories that we know were foremost in the mind of the shooter last Saturday.”

By the time Air Force One arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport, the protest had swelled to about 2,000 people.

The demonstration had been organized at the last minute, as had Trump’s visit: The White House had not announced until late Monday that he would be visiting Pittsburgh — despite a request from the mayor and some Jewish leaders that he not do so until the shooting victims had been interred and mourned.

Here’s the ‘small protest’ Trump says he didn’t see in Pittsburgh

not-close-to-straight:

This is a reminder that just because it’s the holidays, it doesn’t mean you have to put up with toxic relatives.

You don’t have to sit and listen to Old Granny Racist

You don’t have to sit and listen to Misogynistic Male Members of the Family

You don’t have to sit and listen to Homophobic Aunt Martha and Inappropriate Joke Making Cousin Steve.

You don’t have to let That One Aunt make snide comments about your weight/lack of weight or let That One Uncle look at you weird.

You don’t have to let your siblings torment you and then laugh it off because “we’re family, chill out”

You don’t have to sit and let others make you feel uncomfortable/oppressed/awful about yourself/in valid/anything else just because it’s the holidays.

Your mental and emotional health is more important than whether or not you’re there to hear the ridiculously hypocritical prayer that gets said once a year by someone who would have no issue disowning you if they ever found out how you identify.

YOU are more important than that.

You are more important than a family gathering, and if it’s horrible to go then DONT GO. Drink your pumpkin spice latte and eat your box of cookies alone in your own apartment/dorm/room or go out with friends or take a trip or whatever.

Do something other than putting yourself through all that ick. The holidays are just dates on a calender and family is just people. Don’t jeopardize yourself for the sake of a “tradition”.

You’re more important than that.

astronomically-androngynous:

sounddesignerjeans:

princess-mint:

alarajrogers:

niambi:

I’m????

Oh my God this actually explains so much.

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.

The next time a guy says, “What? You don’t want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.

y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves

Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack

not-close-to-straight:

This is your reminder that if someone uses the words “that was a test/I was testing you/you passed” in reference to their weird behavior or to brush off a fight you had with them?

That’s a red flag.

RUN THE OTHER WAY.

If they do something that makes you angry and you react accordingly and they tell you “I was testing you to see how’d you react” they are PURPOSEFULLY baiting you.

If they allow you to think something awful is happening (usually like they are cheating) and you blow up about it and they say “I was checking to see if you are jealous” they are PURPOSEFULLY trying to push your buttons.

If they invade your privacy (checking your phone, sneaking on your computer) and say “I was testing you, you passed, there’s nothing on your phone” when you catch them, they are PURPOSEFULLY going out of their way to find something to pick a fight.

Healthy relationships do not involve partners that manufacture “tests” to check the other partners commitment.

Healthy relationships do not include pushing the other to the edge just to see what they will do.

Healthy relationships DO NOT INCLUDE excusing terrible behavior by saying “I was testing to see if you loved me”

Labeling actions as “this was me forcing you to prove you feel (this way) by making sure you will act the way I think you should” is manipulative at best and can very easy turn abusive in about a million different ways.

Fail their test. Walk away. Leave them to their toxicity.

It’s not worth it.

“Pop quizzes” are for school, not for relationships.

headspacedad:

emotionalmorphine:

Somewhere along the way fanart become worth more than fanfic to fandom.

Artists have Patreon accounts where people pay real money to view their art early or to access special pictures like scraps or tutorials.

Whereas writers are expected to produce more and more, faster, for nothing in return. No one wants to see our “scraps” and writers who do provide Tips and Tricks often get crap for “policing” how people write.

And it falls into the prevailing notion that somehow writing is something easy, something anyone can do.

This isn’t an attack on fanartists. You deserve to receive some sort of compensation and accolades for your work. And so do fanauthors.

Writing fic is hard work. Yes, anyone can type out a story, same as anyone can pick up a pencil to draw, but what makes the difference, what makes a good piece is the experience and talent of an author. It’s all the stories no one saw, it’s all the writing books we’ve read, it’s the classes we have attended, all rolled into a package that works weeks, months, years to bring the fandom their fic. Yes we write for ourselves but we also write to contribute to fandom – just like artists do.

We’re just the same – artists and authors – and we deserve the same respect for our work.

It’s because everyone thinks they can write.

Publish a book.  One of the first and most continuous comments you’ll hear whenever you tell anyone is: ‘Oh! I’ve been meaning to write a book!’.  People use words to talk.  Writing is just putting words down on paper.  Logically, therefore, anyone that can talk, can write.  Ta da!  See?  Writing is something even small children can do.  Obviously it doesn’t take Real Skill.

Except all those people that will tell you they’ve been meaning to write a book? They never will.  Because, fun fact – writing is hard.  Writing is very hard.  Its hard to sit down and focus your mind and string words together on paper in sentence after sentence after sentence.  For hours.  Days.  Months.  Until you finish your short story or poem or book.  Its hard to take what’s in your mind and paint pictures of it but without using actual pictures.  Its hard to come up with interesting ways to say things, with characters that matter to people.  Plotting is hard.  Multiple plots are harder.  Multiple plots with multiple characters all using only words – not voice tone, not hand gestures, not pictures to help people understand what you’re saying – is hardest.   Writing is not talking.  Writing is, in a lot of ways, the stripped down version of talking because you have to do it all on paper without any noise or facial expressions to carry the words.  Telling a story is time consuming and requires you to concentrate even when you’d rather not.  It makes you pull out pieces of your soul and give them to other people, who are probably going to misunderstand them because they’re going to see them through their own soul’s view.  But you still have to find a way to connect so that they’ll still care about what you’re telling them.  And at the end of it – you’ll be exhausted and burned out and exhilarated and excited and scared and happy and sad and

someone is going to look at you and say:

‘oh!  I’ve been meaning to write a book!’.

People know they’re not artists because they can pick up a pencil and quickly see that they don’t have the practice to draw.  Everyone is a writer because writing is word art and everyone knows

they can use words.

ishipphanaf:

king-in-yellow:

hopephd:

Seizure First Aid. 

Learn it. Share it. Know it. Use it. 

100% correct medical information on tumblr for once; also consider calling 911 if you don’t know how often the person has seizures and ESPECIALLY if the seizure has lasted 5 minutes or more (which is why the watch is critical)

I have epilepsy so making sure the word is out on how to help people who do have seizures means a lot to me.

scarlettohairdye:

killerchickadee:

buttheadhatesthetcc:

lauralot89:

Jesus Christ was a brown Jew in the Middle East, conceived out of wedlock in an arguably interracial if not interspecies (deity and human) relationship, raised by his mother and stepfather in place of his absent father.  He may not have had a Y chromosome.  He spent his early youth as a refugee in Egypt, where his family no doubt survived initially on handouts from the wealthy (You think they kept that gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the wise men?  Hell no, they sold that stuff for food and lodging).  He later returned with his parents to their occupied homeland and lived in poverty.

The religion of Jesus’s people has no concept of a permanent hell and instructed its priests on how to induce miscarriages.  Jesus explicitly rejected the concept of disability as a divine punishment.  He spoke out against religious hypocrites.  He had enough respect for women to let his mother choose the time of his first miracle.  He blessed a same sex couple.  He told a rich man that he must give up his wealth to get to heaven, and also told a parable about a rich man suffering in agony in presumably Gehinnom (basically Purgatory) just to hammer the point home.  He told people to pay their taxes.  He declared “love your neighbor” to be one of the two commandments on which all laws hang.  He commanded his followers to help the poor.  He commanded them to help the sick and the needy.  He spent time with social outcasts.  He healed the servant of a high priest during his arrest rather than fighting back.  He was put to death by the occupying government because he was a political radical.

Trump and his administration are xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, fear-mongering, warmongering, tax-dodging, anti-Semitic, anti-choice, anti-welfare, anti-equal pay, anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-immigration, support tax cuts for the rich, support Citizen’s United, want to keep refugees out of this country, want to limit our ability to speak against the government, plan to abolish the Affordable Care Act, and they wrap all of that up behind a banner of “Christian family values.”  If you support them, you have no right to call yourself a follower of Christ.

it’s so rare, yet so fulfilling, to see the J-man on my dash

One of my friends is literally the most religious Christian I have ever met. What does that mean in regards to her lifestyle and outlook? She loves everyone. EVERYONE. Unconditionally. And she supports healthcare and education and birth control and everything that’s necessary to have a healthy, stable society.

Because that’s what her homeboy JC would want.

Canon Jesus is better than Fandom Jesus.

“I thought that because he was not hitting me, he was not abusing me — but he was.”

plannedparenthood:

image

Lizzie, a Planned Parenthood patient, writes:

I lived far from my family for seven years. I got married during that time, and my son was born shortly thereafter. I would never have used the word at the time, but my husband abused me from day one. He belittled me, isolated me from family and friends, forbade me from leaving the house, and took away my control of my own finances.

He was an alcoholic and would shout at me for suggesting he address the problem. I felt unsafe, small, and powerless every day. I witnessed him physically and verbally assault children in our family. I thought that because he was not hitting me, he was not abusing me — but he was.

In 2015, I returned to my home town with my toddler son to find work here, expecting to bring my husband with me soon after my arrival. As we spent more time apart, I began to realize how much better my life was without him, and was shocked when people I met liked me. Regardless, I was convinced that we had just been having a rough patch and that I needed to toughen up.

During our marriage, my husband was personally offended if I ever wanted to have an appointment to be tested for STDs, despite the fact that I was almost certain he was having sex with other women. When I came home, I decided to make an appointment for the STD testing that I had been forbidden from getting. I went to the only place I knew I could go hassle free: Planned Parenthood.

At my appointment the nurse asked, “Do you feel safe at home?”

I burst into tears on the spot. I realized that I DID feel safe at home — for the first time in years. The thought of him joining me and my son filled me with dread and fear.

The nurse asked me what was going on, and listened to what I had to say. She encouraged me to get help, and to find a good therapist. She took me seriously, which nobody else had done. She made me realize that my experience was real, my feelings were real, and the abuse that I experienced was real. Now, two and a half years later, I am divorced, and am dealing with the PTSD that I was diagnosed with shortly after that appointment.

The emotional and verbal abuse that Lizzie experienced is a form of domestic violence (sometimes called intimate partner violence). Sexual and reproductive control, like preventing someone from getting health care, is also a form of domestic violence. Sexual and reproductive control includes things like:

  • preventing you from getting health care, like STD tests

  • forcing your partner to have sex, or do something they don’t want to do sexually

  • threatening to break up with someone if they don’t have sex with you

  • refusing to wear a condom, or pressuring your partner not to use one

  • hiding or throwing out birth control

  • taking off or purposely breaking condoms (AKA stealthing)

  • lying about using birth control

  • threatening a partner who doesn’t want to get pregnant

  • forcing a partner to have an abortion when they don’t want to

  • forcing a partner to carry a pregnancy to term when they want to have an abortion

All of these actions prevent you from making decisions about your own body — and all of them are abusive behaviors.

If you’ve experienced sexual or reproductive control in your relationship, or any other kind of abuse, you’re not alone, and there’s help available. You can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline, or if you’re a teen, check out Love Is Respect. Or, like Lizzie, your local Planned Parenthood health center may be able to help you find the best resources for you in your area. Planned Parenthood health centers also offer birth control methods that are private, like the implant and shot, as well as STD and pregnancy testing.

If you’re worried about someone in your life who may be in an abusive or unhealthy relationship, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is also a great resource to help you figure out how to help.