I am an intersectional feminist, a secular humanist, an atheist, pro-choice, left-wing, sex+, a mental health and disabilities advocate, a skeptic and a freethinker.
I am a black belt, an artist, a gamer, a tea-drinker and a cat-lover.
I love yellow, the Simpsons, Harry Potter, manga/anime, kinkiness, P!nk, costumes, quotes and gaming.
I also run a tumblr solely for funny stuff, steampunkbanana (linked below).
I held my breath at the last one.
IT WAS COOL AND THEN IT GOT SCARY AS SHIT
This was crazy but .. we need tougher gun laws.
that last frame fucked me up
16th May 2013
Reblogged From picatso
Notes: 171937
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?
I mean, can we just talk about how this parallels the actual education system? Where they’re so concerned about teaching us things like logarithms and graphing that we don’t know shit about what’s actually out there in the adult world, like doing taxes or writing checks or anything? I mean, “It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about.” School children are often under the impression that getting A’s in all their classes ensures a successful future, but really, it’s so ignorant because the real world isn’t just one big question-and-answer paper. There is so much more to the world than being able to give back information like some kind of super-computer, and brainwashing children into thinking that theory is key is just going to lead to a bunch of children falling flat on their faces when they’re pushed into the adult world and feel as if everything new they try to do is wrong because it wasn’t taught to them step-by-step. I just really love Harry’s line, “And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what’s out there?” because I feel as if sometimes we just learn things for the sake of knowing them, despite whether it is actually useful. Yes, school is important, and getting bad grades isn’t a good way to start your future, but it’s so much more than that, you see.
this sounds a lot like something Hermione would say
but actually.
(Source: dracoharrys)
“I asked a six year old what my movie should be about, and this is what he told me.”
I love everything about this video.
scared is scared of things you like
This just made me feel really happy :) I need more happy things on my blog.
(Source: vimeo.com)
What Love means to a 4-8 year old: A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, ’What does love mean?’ The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined
See what you think:
‘When my grandmother got arthritis , she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.. So my grandfather does it for her all the time , even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’ – Rebecca, age 8
‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’ – Billy, age 4
‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’ – Karl, age 5
‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’ –Chrissy, age 6
‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’ -Terri, age 4
‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him , to make sure the taste is OK.’ – Danny, age 7
‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing , you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that.
They look gross when they kiss’ – Emily, age 8
‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents
and listen.’ –Bobby, age 7
‘If you want to learn to love better , you should start with a friend who you hate” –Nikka, age 6
‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt , then he wears it everyday..’ –Noelle, age 7
‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’ –Tommy, age 6
‘During my piano recital , I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’ – Cindy, age 8
‘My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’ –Clare, age 6
‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’ –Elaine, age 5
‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’ –Chris, age 7
‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’ -Mary Ann, age 4
‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’ –Lauren, age 4
‘When you love somebody , your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ - Karen, age 7
‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross..’ –Mark, age 6
‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’ –Jessica, age 8
The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbour was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said, ‘Nothing , I just helped him cry’.
I will never tell my children that if a boy picks on them it means he likes them. I will teach my children that “Anyone who cares about you or loves you would never dream of hurting you. They would want to protect and nurture you.” End rape culture, stop nurturing abusive relationships, by teaching your kids differently.
This.
YES!
Taylor Clark (via mindovermatterzine)
Wow: This quote I posted the other day now has 1100+ notes. I think the gendering of anxiety is really hitting home with a lot of people.
(via mindovermatterzine)
This just… I just said “WOW.” aloud.
Today my son drew himself as a boy for the first time in his life. He’s five and a half years old. For that many years, when he has drawn himself, he has drawn himself as a girl.
In the mediums of crayon, colored pencil and marker, our son is a beautiful girl with long red hair, a big puffy ball gown the color of cotton candy and a tiara with a gigantic heart-shaped stone front and center. Sometimes he’s a sassy girl in a jean skirt, black leather jacket and knee-high boots. Sometimes he’s a girl going to school in a hot-pink t-shirt dress and purple high top sneakers with turquoise socks peaking out.
It took his dad and me a while to get used to seeing our son’s self-portraits. For a long time there was the urge to correct him, to remind him that he is a boy and his renderings weren’t accurate. We fought that urge until it wasn’t there anymore. Feelings of uneasiness popped up in us here and there when it was time for arts and crafts, especially when there were other people around. I’ve had to remind myself that you never tell an artist that his or her art is bad or wrong — art can’t be those two things (especially when you are five).
Being acutely aware that children who continually, over an extended period of time draw themselves as the opposite sex are more likely to be transgender, we have always wondered if and when the day would come when our boy would draw himself as a boy looking like a boy. We imagined that if it ever happened we would feel a sense of relief and happiness. Then, it happened and we were nothing but sad.
C.J. has just started kindergarten and at his school every kindergartner is matched up with a “Kinderbuddy,” an older student at the school who will see C.J. on a regular basis throughout the year to read to him, play with him and mentor him. Hopefully they will have a mutually beneficial and special relationship.
Because the school tries to match up Kinderbuddies based on sex/gender, C.J.’s Kinderbuddy is a boy. Because C.J.’s sex and gender aren’t in total alignment, that process for matching up Kinderbuddies isn’t exactly ideal.
On their first day of meeting, the Kinderbuddies had to sit together and draw a picture of themselves together. That’s when it happened; C.J. drew himself as a boy next to his boy Kinderbuddy.
“Mommy, I got a Kinderbuddy today. And, he’s so cool! He’s a teenager!” C.J. said after school. By “teenager” he meant “sixth grader.”
He showed us the picture that they had drawn together. We didn’t recognize our son. We looked at each other in shock.
“Hey, Buddy…how come you drew yourself as a boy?” C.J.’s Dad asked casually.
“Oh, that’s because I didn’t want my Kinderbuddy to know that I like girl stuff,” C.J. said matter-of-factly.
Our hearts sank. We had always thought that things would feel more right, more normal, on the day that C.J. finally drew himself as a boy, but things didn’t. Things felt sad because our son had to do it out of self-preservation. He did it to adapt and conform. He did it to hide his true self. It felt like he had lost some of his innocence.
Diane Ehrensaft, an expert on raising gender nonconforming children, once wrote:
“Gender creative children are blessed with the ability to hold on to the concept — that we all had one time in our lives — that we were free to be anything we wanted – boy, girl, maybe both.”
With that drawing, it felt like our son was losing his grip on the concept that he is free to be anything he wants to be. Was he losing his grip? Or, was he tightening his grip on the concept and exercising control over when it could be on display and when it couldn’t?
C.J. didn’t want to hang his Kinderbuddy drawing on the fridge or his bedroom door for all to see like he usually wants to do with his art. He wanted to throw it away.
“Why?” I asked.
“Cause that’s not really me,” he said as he sat in the sun at our dining room table, drawing himself with a side ponytail, purple shirt with a pink heart on it and an orange skirt.
(Source: raisingmyrainbow.com)
What happens when you give a thousand Ethiopian kids - who have never read a printed word before in their lives - a thousand Android tablets with zero instructions, zero lessons, zero context, nothing but tablet PCs and an unvoiced but very real open-ended question, “What do we do now?”
The answer: Within five months, every kid in the village is computer-literate, they’ve figured out how to hack the OS to do what they want, they’re taking pictures, learning English, writing their own stories and just in general being badass and awesome with this shiny new technology.Without any instruction whatsoever, the kids not only figured out that the tablets had a camera installed, but that the camera software had been locked out somewhere along the way, and played around with the OS until they figured out a way around the lockout.
Kids. Just… kids. Kids are awesome.
An 8-year-old girl camper began swimming near the edge of the pool by me. She was a tiny girl with a bubbly personality, and she was very attached to me. Upon seeing us talking, the boy swam over and started chasing her around the water. It was clear from the way she was trying to get away from him and her screeching that she wanted to be left alone — her body language and tense demeanor should have showed that she was uncomfortable — but if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the “stop” she yelled in protest should have been enough for him to go away.
That’s when it really hit me how serious the situation was. I could immediately picture it escalating. I didn’t see an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy anymore; I saw the two of them as fully grown and matured adults. The girl was still small and skinny, and the boy was large enough to overpower her with little effort. I could see her running away from him, trying to push off his advances in a more sexual situation, but him refusing to believe that she really wanted him to stop. I saw him ignoring her physical protests right along with the verbal ones, convinced she wanted him there. It horrified me.
I reprimanded him immediately, insisting that when someone asks you to stop, it’s important to listen. Almost seconds later, a male counselor standing by the same section of the pool told him not to listen to me and to continue his pursuit of this little girl, despite her obvious protests. Here were two boys, roughly 10 years apart in age, but with the same views on women: that consent doesn’t matter. It’s not a generational thing: this mindset has clearly been ingrained into the public psyche from an early age. How often are we told not to take no for an answer? How often do we see children pestering their parents about getting a new toy until they eventually give in? How often do we hear about a woman’s whims coming with her menstrual cycle? How often do we see on television shows and in movies a woman “changing her mind” about a man who is persistent enough or who just proves himself worthy? The idea that a woman will change her mind is so ingrained that we can’t always recognize it at first.
"(Source: stfueverything)
Kiddo told me that when it’s bathroom break time in her Kindergarten class that the boys go as a group and the girls go as a group.
“Except for A. She thinks she’s a boy,” said Kiddo.
“Well, maybe A is a boy,” I responded.
“No, she’s a girl!”
“How do you know?”
“Because…she’s a girl.”
“Ok, Kiddo. Let me explain something to you. A person can be born with a vagina, but still be a boy because that’s what they are inside. Also, a person can be born with a penis but still be a girl because that’s what they are inside. Your body doesn’t decide if you are a boy or a girl. It’s just something you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes. So, if A asks you to call them a boy, will you?”
“No.”
“But why?”
“Because everyone says she’s a girl!”
“Well, there are a lot of people who don’t understand that being a boy or a girl is not something they decide. It’s something each person knows about themself. You know you’re a girl, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, don’t you think A knows if they are a boy or a girl?”
“…Yes.”
“So if A asks you to call them a boy, will you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great, Kiddo. You know why? Because, like I said, there a lot of people who won’t believe A and that’s gonna be something that hurts them a lot. But if A has just one person that believes them and treats them the way they want to be treated, that could help A a lot.”
“Ok. If A asks me, I will.”
OH GEE BUT WAIT! According to most people this is something that kids just can’t understand!!
While Kiddo may not understand everything about sex vs. gender and identity, she understands being nice and helping people.
I don’t doubt that we’ll probably have to revisit this topic again, but I honestly do think this is a topic worth talking to your kids about and it can be done.
HOW DIFFICULT. HOW SCARRING.
(Source: lagertha-lodbrok)
The chills that just came down my spine. You guys don’t understand.
that was intense. wow.
I thought he was building a robot ;(
D:
what. the. fuck.
This made me tear up profusely. :(
(Source: justaskinnyboy.com)
Male privilege is girls being told that boys are only hitting/pinching/hurting them because “they have a crush on you” in elementary school, instead of having their complaints about physical harm taken seriously.
(Source: all-about-male-privilege)
All children are beautiful. All.
NOT just the ones with blue eyes or light brown eyes.
It always strikes me how excited folks get when they find POC with “white” features like blue/light brown eyes or blond hair. As if they must have descended freshly from the heavens —- special angel person of mystical value. Cuz they got that white in them. It’s pretty insulting to everyone involved.
1. It is based on the presumption that the perceived “whiteness” of that person is what is beautiful.
2. Presumes that dark-eyed, dark-skinned folk are too ordinary for special-ness.
Fuck this colonialist mentality.
