Let me tell you some things.

I used to investigate child abuse and neglect. I can tell you how to stop the vast majority of abortion in the world.

First, make knowledge and access to contraception widely available. Start teaching kids before they hit puberty. Teach them about domestic violence and coercion, and teach them not to coerce and rape. Create a strong, loving community where women and girls feel safe and supported in times of need. Because guess what? They aren’t. You know what happens to babies born under such circumstances? They get hurt, unnecessarily. They get sick, unnecessarily. They get removed from parents who love them but who are unprepared for the burden of a child. Resources? Honey, we try. There aren’t enough resources anywhere. There are waiting lists, and promises, and maybes. If the government itself can’t hook people up, what makes you think an impoverished single mom can handle it?

Abolish poverty. Do you have any idea how much childcare costs? Daycare can cost as much or more than monthly rent. They may be inadequately staffed. Getting a private nanny is a nice idea, but they don’t come cheap either. Relatives? Do they own a car? Does the bus run at the right times? Do they have jobs of their own they need to work just to keep the lights on? Are they going to stick around until you get off you convenience store shift at 4 AM? Do they have criminal histories that will make them unsuitable as caregivers when CPS pokes around? You gonna pay for that? Who’s going to pay for that?

End rape. I know your type errs on the side of blaming the woman, but I’ve seen little girls who’ve barely gotten their periods pregnant because somebody thought raping preteens was an awesome idea. You want to put a child through that? Or someone with a mental or physical inability for whom pregnancy would be frightening, painful or even life-threatening? I’ve seen nonverbal kids who had their feet sliced up by caregivers for no fucking reason at all, you think sexual abuse doesn’t happen either?

You say there’s lots of couples who want to adopt. Kiddo, what they want to adopt are healthy white babies, preferably untainted by the wombs and genetics of women with alcohol or drug dependencies. I’ve seen the kids they don’t want, who almost no one wants. You people focus only on the happy pink babies, the gigglers, the ones who grow and grow with no trouble. Those are not the kids who linger in foster care. Those are certainly not the older kids and teenagers who age out of foster care and then are thrown out in the streets, usually with an array of medical and mental health issues. Are they too old to count?

And yeah, I’ve seen the babies, little hand-sized things barely clinging to life. There’s no glory, no wonder there. There is no wonder in a pregnant woman with five dollars to her name, so deep in depression you wonder if she’ll be alive in a week. Therapy costs money. Medicine costs money. Food, clothes, electricity cost money. Government assistance is a pittance; poverty drives women and girls into situations where they are forced to rely on people who abuse them to survive. (I’ve been up in more hospitals than I can count.)

In each and every dark pit of desperation, I have never seen a pro-lifer. I ain’t never seen them babysitting, scrubbing floors, bringing over goods, handing mom $50 bucks a month or driving her to the pediatrician. I ain’t never seen them sitting up for hours with an autistic child who screams and rages so his mother can get some sleep while she rests up from working 14-hour days. I don’t see them fixing leaks in rundown houses or playing with a kid while the police prepare to interview her about her sexual abuse. They’re not paying for the funerals of babies and children who died after birth, when they truly do become independent organisms. And the crazy thing is they think they’ve already done their job, because the child was born!

Aphids give birth, girl. It’s no miracle. You want to speak for the weak? Get off your high horse and get your hands dirty helping the poor, the isolated, the ill and mentally ill women and mothers and their children who already breathe the dirty air. You are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, for children. You don’t have a flea’s comprehension of injustice. You are not doing shit for life until you get in there and fight that darkness. Until you understand that abortion is salvation in a world like ours. Does that sound too hard? Do you really think suffering post-birth is more permissible, less worthy of outrage?

“Pro-life” is simply a philosophy in which the only life worth saving is the one that can be saved by punishing a woman.

STFU, Conservatives: When I say I’m pro-life…

This is perfect.

(via mis-anthrop-ologie)

And I mean, I believe in stuff like this.

(via freudianflips)

Well, this made me tear up this morning.

(via tastiejam)

““Pro-life” is simply a philosophy in which the only life worth saving is the one that can be saved by punishing a woman.”

(via damekatharsis)

Always reblog.

(via stfuconservatives)

Pregnancy and abortion happens people who aren’t women, too, but yeah

Replacements for bigoted slurs/language

General Non-bigoted Slurs
Jerk
Waste of space
Asshole
Asshat
Assclown
Asswipe
Shithead
Plonker
Git
Skeeve
Mook

Instead of “Crazy”, “Nuts”, “Psycho”, “Insane”, etc.
Out there
Over the top
A bit much
Absurd
Illogical
Nonsensical
Preposterous
Unreasonable
Silly 
Poorly reasoned

Instead of “Retarded”
Ignorant
Numbskull
Nincompoop
Bozo 
Uninformed
Silly 
Poorly reasoned
Illogical
Ineffective
Inefficient
Uninteresting

Instead of “Bitching” or “Nagging”
Complaining
Whining
Moaning about
Kvetching
Pestering 

Instead of “Lame”
Annoying
Irritating
Ridiculous
Aggravating
Frustrating
Infuriating
Baseless
Obtuse
Ignorant
Uninformed
Asinine
Fallacious
Pathetic 
Stale

Instead of “Bitch” and other similar gendered/racialized/etc. slurs
Malicious
Unpleasant
Selfish

Replacement for “-phobia”
xenophobia (xenophobe) : misoxeny (misoxene)
homophobia (homophobe) : heterosexism (heterosexist), heteromisogyny (heteromisogynist), homosexualmisia (homosexualmisist)
biphobia (biphobe) : monosexism (monosexist)
transphobia (transphobe) : transmisogyny(transmisogynist), cissexism (cissexist), transmisia (transmisist)
Islamaphobia (Islamaphobe) : Islamomisia (Islamomisist)

Silly/Fun General Non-Bigoted Slurs
Chode
Fartsniffer
Pimplesqueeze
Buttsmear
Poindexter

some more for lame are weak, poor, and feeble

(Source: forums.theirisnetwork.org)

I am opposed to abortion. I am opposed to providing condoms to someone. If you want to have a party, have a party, but don’t ask me to pay for it.

New Hampshire Executive Council member Raymond Wieczorek, who voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

According to Think Progress, Planned Parenthood has stopped providing birth control pills and other contraception in New Hampshire after the state’s executive council rejected up to $1.8 million in funding for the group because it also provides privately-funded abortions. After losing its contract — which paid for education, distributing contraception, and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections — the centers have turned away 20 to 30 patients a day who have arrived to refill their birth control prescriptions.

And there’s this: Last year, Planned Parenthood provided contraception for 13,242 patients in New Hampshire, [CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Steve] Trombley said. The organization also provided 6,112 breast exams, 5,548 screenings for cervical cancer and 18,858 tests for sexually transmitted infections.

Which is more expensive, condoms or babies? Breast exams or breast cancer? Birth control isn’t always about partying, guys, and so what if it is? Sometimes people go to physician’s offices and get drugs to party with, so maybe we should defund pharmaceutical companies via tax loopholes and grants. This is covered by federal dollars:

So’s this:

Encore Deluxe Penis Pump
by Encore, Inc. 

This is not:

Don’t ask for my tax dollars to pay for your Medicare-funded Viagra and penis pumps if you can’t stomach the thought of me getting pap smears with yours. If you want to party, don’t ask me to pay for it. Fair is fair, right?

(via cognitivedissonance)

nattycattynat:

On the Difference Between Good Dogs and Dogs That Need a Newspaper Smack

esmeweatherwax:

thetransboy:

christinathena:

Good post on privilege with an awesome metaphor

Imagine, if you will, a small house, built someplace cool-ish but not cold, perhaps somewhere in Ohio, and inhabited by a dog and a lizard. The dog is a big dog, something shaggy and nordic, like a Husky or Lapphund – a sled dog, built for the snow. The lizard is small, a little gecko best adapted to living in a muggy rainforest somewhere. Neither have ever lived anywhere else, nor met any other creature; for the purposes of this exercise, this small house is the entirety of their universe.

The dog, much as you might expect, turns on the air conditioning. Really cranks it up, all the time – this dog was bred for hunting moose on the tundra, even the winter here in Ohio is a little warm for his taste. If he can get the house to fifty (that’s ten C, for all you weirdo metric users out there), he’s almost happy.

The gecko can’t do much to control the temperature – she’s got tiny little fingers, she can’t really work the thermostat or turn the dials on the A/C. Sometimes, when there’s an incandescent light nearby, she can curl up near it and pick up some heat that way, but for the most part, most of the time, she just has to live with what the dog chooses. This is, of course, much too cold for her – she’s a gecko. Not only does she have no fur, she’s cold-blooded! The temperature makes her sluggish and sick, and it permeates her entire universe. Maybe here and there she can find small spaces of warmth, but if she ever wants to actually do anything, to eat or watch TV or talk to the dog, she has to move through the cold house.

Now, remember, she’s never known anything else. This is just how the world is – cold and painful and unhealthy for her, even dangerous, and she copes as she knows how. But maybe some small part of her thinks, “hey, it shouldn’t be like this,” some tiny growing seed of rebellion that says who she is right next to a lamp is who she should be all the time. And she and the dog are partners, in a sense, right? They live in this house together, they affect each other, all they’ve got is each other. So one day, she sees the dog messing with the A/C again, and she says, “hey. Dog. Listen, it makes me really cold when you do that.”

The dog kind of looks at her, and shrugs, and keeps turning the dial.

This is not because the dog is a jerk.

This is because the dog has no fucking clue what the lizard even just said.

Consider: he’s a nordic dog in a temperate climate. The word “cold” is completely meaningless to him. He’s never been cold in his entire life. He lives in an environment that is perfectly suited to him, completely aligned with his comfort level, a world he grew up with the tools to survive and control, built right in to the way he was born.

So the lizard tries to explain it to him. She says, “well, hey, how would you like it if I turned the temperature down on you?”

The dog goes, “uh… sounds good to me.”

What she really means, of course, is “how would you like it if I made you cold.” But she can’t make him cold. She doesn’t have the tools, or the power, their shared world is not built in a way that allows it – she simply is not physically capable of doing the same harm to him that he’s doing to her. She could make him feel pain, probably, I’m sure she could stab him with a toothpick or put something nasty in his food or something, but this specific form of pain, he will never, ever understand – it’s not something that can be inflicted on him, given the nature of the world they live in and the way it’s slanted in his favor in this instance. So he doesn’t get what she’s saying to him, and keeps hurting her.

Most privilege is like this.

A straight cisgendered male American, because of who he is and the culture he lives in, does not and cannot feel the stress, creepiness, and outright threat behind a catcall the way a woman can. His upbringing has given him fur and paws big enough to turn the dials and plopped him down in temperate Ohio. When she says “you don’t have to put up with being leered at,” what she means is, “you don’t ever have to be wary of sexual interest.” That’s male privilege. Not so much that something doesn’t happen to men, but that it will never carry the same weight, even if it does.

So what does this mean? And what are we asking you to do, when we say “check your privilege” or “your privilege is showing”?

Well, quite simply, we want you to understand when you have fur. And, by extension, when that means you should listen. See, the dog’s not an asshole just for turning down the temperature. As far as he knows, that’s fine, right? He genuinely cannot feel the pain it causes, he doesn’t even know about it. No one thinks he’s a bad person for totally accidentally doing harm.

Here’s where he becomes an asshole: the minute the gecko says, “look, you’re hurting me,” and he says, “what? No, I’m not. This ‘cold’ stuff doesn’t even exist, I should know, I’ve never felt it. You’re imagining it. It’s not there. It’s fine because of fur, because of paws, because look, you can curl up around this lamp, because sometimes my water dish is too tepid and I just shut up and cope, obviously temperature isn’t this big deal you make it, and you’ve never had to deal with mange anyway, my life is just as hard.”

And then the dog just ignores it. Because he can. That’s the privilege that comes with having fur, with being a dog in Ohio. He doesn’t have to think about it. He doesn’t have to live daily with the cold. He has no idea what he’s talking about, and he will never, ever be forced to learn. He can keep making the lizard miserable until the day they both die, and he will never suffer for it beyond the mild annoyance of her complaining. And she, meanwhile, gets to try not to freeze to death.

So, quite simply: don’t be that dog. If you’re straight and a queer person says “do not title your book ‘Beautiful Cocksucker,’ that’s offensive,” listen and believe him. If you’re white and a black person says “really, now, we’re all getting a little tired of that What These People Need Is A Honky trope, please write a better movie,” listen and believe her. If you’re male and a woman says “this maquette is a perfect example of why women don’t read comics,” listen and believe her. Maybe you don’t see anything wrong with it, maybe you think it’s oh-so-perfect to your artistic vision, maybe it seems like an oversensitive big deal over nothing to you. WELL OF COURSE IT DOES, YOU HAVE FUR. Nevertheless, just because you personally can’t feel that hurt, doesn’t mean it’s not real. All it means is you have privilege.

That’s not a bad thing. You can’t help being born with fur. Every single one of us has some kind of privilege over somebody. What matters is whether we’re aware of it, and what we choose to do with it, and that we not use it to dismiss the valid and real concerns of the people who don’t share our particular brand.

This post is beautiful.

This is brilliant!

(Source: oldchristinathena)

Treatment of NonConsent In Fandom and Online Creative Communities, and How To Start Positive Change (TRIGGER WARNING, OBVIOUSLY)

hobbitdragon:

TRIGGER WARNING: Includes discussion of victim-blaming ideologies, mentions of rape and sexual molestation, references to rape jokes made in complete seriousness, depressing statistics about rape, and probably more that I’m not even remembering to warn for here.

**


I will start this essay by saying that if your behavior resembles any of my remarks, my purpose is not to shame, guilt-trip, or blame you. Shame, guilt, and blame merely continue cycles of abuse. Instead, the purpose of this essay is to bring positive change by offering concrete courses of action and attempting to explain why I think they’re important. But this may be a tough essay for some of you, and you have to read to the end of this essay to get to the part where I offer suggestions for change.
*

Read More

You are who you say you are

christinathena:

I don’t care if someone has big breasts, is wearing skirts and high heels, wears make-up and nail polish, likes to wear jewelry, and is carrying a purse.  If they say they’re a man, he’s a fucking man.  I’ll call him a man and he and whatever name he asks me to use.

Likewise, I don’t care if someone has a beard and a mustache, is wearing jeans and flannel, drinking beer while watching football.  If they say they’re a woman, she’s a fucking woman.  I’ll call her a woman and she and whatever name she asks me to use.

Likewise, whatever a person looks like, no matter how “feminine” or “masculine”, if they say they’re something other than male or female, they’re a fucking non-binary person. I’ll call them xe or they or e or whatever pronouns they prefer, and whatever name and terms they prefer.

(Source: oldchristinathena)

How to deal with being called out

jaded16india:

youarenotyou:

1. Don’t tone police. It is NOT your right to dictate how someone should react to their oppression.
2. Don’t demand a detailed explanation. You’re basically asking the person to justify their call out. It’s exhausting, many resources are available, and often this is just a way to try and derail, start an argument, or discredit the other person.
3. Don’t get defensive. A call out is not all about you as a person.
4. Don’t take it personally. Calling out is not a personal attack. If someone calls you out, they’re trying to teach you something. Calling out is a way for people to educate others on how systems of oppression operate on a day to day, individual level.
5. Don’t attack the person who’s calling you out. That’s just fucked up.
6. Don’t assume the person calling you out is just “looking to get offended”. Nobody enjoys calling other people out. To call someone out, people often have to mentally prepare for serious repercussions. Calling someone out might mean starting an argument, during which many people will side with the oppressor by default (especially if you’re privileged over the person calling you out).
7. Understand that being oppressive is not the same as being offensive or hurting feelings. The damage you’re perpetuating is part of a larger system of oppression.
8. Realize that your intent is irrelevant when it comes to whether you were oppressive or not.
9. Recognize the power dynamics that are in place between you and the person calling you out.
10. Understand intersectionality. IE: Just because you are oppressed by classism, doesn’t mean you lack male privilege.
11. Know that being privileged means being oppressive, but you can work to reduce the ways that you are oppressive.
12. LISTEN.
13. Genuinely apologize.
14. Work on oppression reduction and being the best ally you can be. The point of calling you out is to draw your attention to how you’re being oppressive, so that you can work to change it. If you made an oppressive joke, there’s probably oppressive thoughts in place (conscious or not) that led to you to think the joke was appropriate. Everyone has to unlearn the oppressive things they’ve absorbed from an oppressive society. We are all taught ways to keep marginalized people in their place, but the good thing is that we can identify these things in ourselves and change. And then we can start working on dismantling the kyriarchy, yeah!

Feel free to add to this or change as necessary.

15. When you apologise, the marginalised person doesn’t owe you shit. Least of all, to accept your apology, if ever. If they don’t accept your apology, move on. It’s the least you can do. 

robbicide:

Ughh I’m sorry but I have a HUGE problem with this. The little diagram of the person up there is okay, but THOSE FUCKING SLIDERS….

I’m sorry, but these things are NOT two dimensional. IT’S A WIBBLY WOBBLY, GENDERY-BENDERY SORT OF THING, WHERE THINGS JUMP UP AND DOWN AND SWING AROUND AND SOME THINGS AREN’T RELATED AT ALL… it’s not this way or that way, it’s not a scale. All these things are complex and vary so much more than “MALE <—-> FEMALE” and it’s really unfortunate that this is spreading and people are saying they are learning from this.

THE SLIDERS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE IN EXPLAINING THESE THINGS AND THIS IS NOT A CHART YOU SHOULD REFER TO TO EDUCATE YOURSELF OR ANYONE ELSE.

What about genderqueer people who identify as genderless? Neither male nor female, but an entirely different gender?

What about asexual people? Pansexual? Polysexual?

ETC ETC ETC….

Basically the sliders are bullshit and erase people. If you are a genderqueer person whose identity is fluid and slides between male and female, maybe these work for you. But I find that these assume that there are ONLY MALE AND FEMALE, ONLY HETERO AND HOMOSEXUAL, AND VARIATIONS OF THESE TWO THINGS. Which is completely untrue.

misterstibbons:

geschlechtsumwandlungstrieb:

geschlechtsumwandlungstrieb:

misterstibbons:

[Image Description: Cover of The New Republic showing a young man with dark hair, reasonably normal clothes, and a slight mustache just above a slight smile. White text says, “He was born in a woman’s body. Now he is a second-class citizen. WELCOME TO AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE. By Eliza Gray.”]

xxboy:

thenewrepublic:

Eliza Gray: 

Several weeks ago, TNR’s art director, Joe Heroun, conducted a photo shoot in New York with eleven members of the transgender community. I spoke to them and learned about their lives. There was Maggie Stumpp, who transitioned at the height of a successful career in finance. Or, Laverne Cox, who survived intense bullying as a boy in Mobile, Alabama, and has become a stunning and confident actress and producer. And Sam Berkley, our cover subject, a self-described “scrappy kid from Brooklyn,” who decided he was “done with this girl shit” and transitioned a year ago. He is now a plaintiff in a civil rights law suit against New York City. It would be impossible to catalog or classify all the varieties of transgender experience. My hope, however, is that the following gallery contributes to our understanding of this community.

Click the photo to see the full gallery.

#sometimes we can have nice things

I KNOW THIS IS LOVELY AND RESPECTFUL AND LETS THE PEOPLE TALK FOR THEMSELVES

OMG THEY ALSO INCLUDE A NOT-PARTICULARLY-BINARY PERSON AND DIDN’T PASS JUDGMENT

YAY OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS ALL OF MY HEARTS

I KNOW, RIGHT?

AAAAH IT IS DOUBLE PLUS GOOD

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

cunthorse:

iwillnotshavemyvagina:

If you choose to wear makeup, you should really know what you’re really putting on your face, nails and body.

Triclosan

Synthetic Musks

Formaldehyde

1,4-dioxane

Hydroquinone

Phthalates

Parabens

Lead and Other Heavy Metals

Nitrosamines

Read about it and keep yourself safe.

Certain cosmetics contain teratogens, so be careful and educate yourself of the potential effects if you are going to wear makeup while pregnant.

Signal boosting. 

Slightly different, but also strive for animal testing-free products. (handy lists at Leaping Bunny)

Companies known to have animal testing in some stage of manufacture: here

(Source: iwillnotshavemyvagina)