whoneedsfeminism:

My daughters should not have a truck grabbed out of their hands by an adult and handed to a male cousin because, “This is a boy toy anyway.”

My son shouldn’t be ridiculed because his favorite color is pink.  

(via strawberrypookmoo)

randomlancila:

airpunchingacademic:

acciofangirl:

I just saw some photos of a 300-pound girl posing in her underwear. I’m sure she did it with the good intention of teaching girls to love their body no matter what shape or size or color but I hope we also remember that while it’s important to be comfortable in your own skin, it’s also important to be healthy. The only way to truly love your body is to take care of it.

Weight doesn’t necessarily act as a measure of health though. The girl in the photos might be healthy, just as the size 8 girl in a photo on my dash might not. I know this is just your opinion, but I really think it’s important to separate the two.

^Going to add a little more to this.

Please note that any time I use the term ‘you’, I mean it in a broad sense, and it is not directed at the OP. I have omitted their url in an attempt to prevent them receiving hate. Anywho, here we go.

Please don’t fat shame under the guise of worrying about health. It’s really condescending. If you are not a doctor working with the person in the photo, you know nothing of their health, and therefore should not express an opinion on it.

I don’t know how many times I need to explain this. Fat does not equal unhealthy. Thin does not equal healthy. Every person and every body is different, and while extra weight may be unhealthy on one person, that does not mean it is on another.

I mean, I have a naturally large build. I’m 230 pounds, and you know what? I’m healthy. However, if my younger sister, who is naturally around 120, were to gain a lot of weight, it would be unhealthy for her. Just as it would be for me to shrink down to her size. We’re both currently healthy at our own body weights and we both feel no need to change them.

So, if you see somebody and make a judgment about their health based solely on their weight, remember that you are not their doctor and therefore do not have a say in the matter.

What the poster above me said is completely valid, of course. But it’s also important for OP to understand the following two things:

• This 300lb girl you saw committed an act of bravery, the likes of which you will never understand unless you yourself have been 300lbs. She’s spent her entire life being victim to snickers, insults, disgust, and so-called ‘concern’ of everyone around her. She’s been told her body is wrong every single day, by media, by family, by friends, by strangers. She’s been told she has no right to love her body. She’s been told she’s a victim of an ‘epidemic’, that she’ll never be happy, she’ll never be loved, she’ll never be beautiful. Somehow she ignored this enough to take the pictures you saw. Tell me, how do you think she’d feel if she saw what you said about her?
• Yes, she may be healthy. (check out this post on more for that.) But you know what? She may not be healthy. And if she’s not healthy, it’s still not your place to judge her. She could not be healthy because she has Cushings Disease or Binge Eating Disorder. She could have an underactive thyroid. She could be poor and not have access to fresh, healthful foods. She could just really like Twinkies. The point is, it DOESN’T MATTER.  You have no right to dictate what it means to ‘truly love your body’. To you it means one thing. To me, it means another. To the girl you saw, it means another. And that’s okay, because guess what? She’s not forcing her decisions upon your body—so don’t force your decisions upon hers. You cannot begin to imagine how hard it is every single day to have a body that literally doesn’t ‘fit’ into the norm. You cannot imagine what it does to your MENTAL and EMOTIONAL health (which I’m sure you didn’t mean when you said ‘it’s important to be healthy’) to see people say hurtful things about your body, to hear people say ‘I can’t eat a piece of cake, I don’t want to get fat’, or ‘you’re not fat, you’re beautiful!’ (because of course you can’t be both!), or ‘ugh fat people are so lazy’.

All bodies are good bodies.

Love,

A 400lb girl in her underwear.

katinasutra:

Earlier today, I read an interview with Erika Moen, the awesome cartoonist behind the webcomics “DAR!” and “Bucko.” The interview is linked below, but you don’t necessarily have to read it to understand this post. (You’re probably not as infatuated with Erika Moen as I am, and I’m going to summarize the relevant part here anyway.) 

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/main/interviews/erika-moen-queer-journey

Her webcomic “DAR!” (http://www.darcomic.org/) is an autobiographical webcomic that ran for 6 years. And it’s good, you should read it from the beginning if you have time. It’s about her life, obviously, but it’s really amusing and it also brings up some interesting things about sexual orientation and sexuality. And it’s cool to watch it evolve artistically over time.

Now, in the interview, Erika Moen says something interesting that I didn’t know until today, about why she stopped writing the webcomic. She says that at the beginning of the comic she felt as though she could be completely honest with everyone because she was basically just oversharing like any other young adult with the Internet. But as her audience grew and people began to make criticisms about the way she labeled herself, she felt more restricted in what she could and couldn’t say. And then she goes into what some of these criticisms are.

 Now, at the beginning of her comic, Erika identified as a lesbian. Then she happened to meet a man, another artist, and she started a relationship with him, and they eventually got married. However, she calls herself queer instead of bisexual. Because of this, she was criticized for various things by non-heterosexual individuals, such as denying the existence of bisexual people, trying to make an argument that lesbians should seek heterosexual relationships or that they shouldn’t be taken seriously, and so on. Of course her response to this is basically, “What? I’m just being honest to myself and doing what makes me happy.” Which is, of course, entirely reasonable.

But reading about all of this again made me 1) sad and 2) realize that there’s always something to be said about the labels we use and the concept of sexual fluidity.

People really, really like labels. It’s so easy to just say that person is straight, that person is gay. Some people can handle the concept of bisexuality, although there are definitely misconceptions about what that means.

But when people who have already come out as gay have opposite-sex relationships, people sometimes flip their shit. Some people seem to see it as an actual betrayal of the gay community. It’s not easy to be gay in our society, and if someone says they are gay and then they later fall for a member of the opposite sex, they may be accused of being insincere, or worse. There is a hostility in our society towards gay people caused by politics and religion, and the fact that homosexuality is often called a choice when it is not causes the gay community to fight back against this misconception.

 But caught in the crossfire are people like Erika Moen, who identify as gay but then fall in love with someone of the same sex. These people are not the enemy, they are just those who don’t fit comfortably into black and white labels. 

And the fact that sexual orientation is such a political thing right now makes the labels more black and white than they should be, if you’re going for accuracy. For example, I call myself bisexual, because I personally am attracted to women and men. This attraction is directed towards women more frequently, but it is not greater in intensity for either gender. That is, I’d say it’s a 70/30 split rather than a 50/50, but if you make the cut your gender really makes absolutely no difference to me. A couple of years ago, however, I would have told you I was gay.

I could argue all day with people about whether it was more a case of actual fluidity in sexual orientation or just having insufficient evidence available at the time. But that’s all beside the point.

The point is that I don’t think anyone should be punished for being honest with themselves and refining their definitions of their sexual identity over time. People who have some fluidity in their sexual orientation are often vilified and treated as though they are less sincere than people who can clearly define themselves. I think that’s wrong.

The point is that you shouldn’t stop discovering. It may be that you discover over and over again that you were correct all along, and that’s great. But if that’s not true, it’s alright too.

bluetoothtoaster:

lesserjoke:

saraconcoco:

lesserjoke:

“Saying “I don’t like Rap/Country/Science Fiction/Nonfiction, etc.” is a cop-out. My response is always “I don’t like people who dismiss entire genres due to their own stubborn preconceived notions of that genre.””

—

Mara Wilson (via megansdixon)

Well excuuuuuuse me for trying to find patterns in my behavior/tastes. -___-

I think the speaker was saying there’s always the chance you might like something that’s in the genre you’re dismissing, or at least that’s what I got from the quote. (Basically that it’s more honest to say, “I tend not to like things that are X” than “I don’t like anything that’s X.”)

I’m not going to read science fiction, but not because I’m discriminating against it or something. I just know, through experience, that I enjoy spending my time reading Victorian detective novels instead. Yes, there might be a scifi book that I can enjoy, but I know from previous experiences, I’m more likely to enjoy Sherlock Holmes, or enjoy it more, so why should I pick up the scifi book? It might look like I’m dismissing the entire genre because of ‘stubborn preconceived notions’ but in reality, I just think there’s a genre that I enjoy more and I’d rather spend my limited time with.

Right, and I don’t think that’s incompatible with what the quote was saying. Not to put words in their mouth, but I think they were just protesting against people saying, “I don’t like X.” Like, if your best friend said, “Oh, I just read this amazing book and I think you would really love it,” you should be willing to give it a try (or at least admit that your friend might be right) even if you don’t typically like things in that genre.

Edited To Add: The number of people who love the Harry Potter books despite not usually liking fantasy or young adult literature comes to mind here. If you draw boundaries and say, “I don’t like X”, it’s less likely that you’ll be willing to take a chance on something in that genre that you might end up loving. You might suffer less disappointment, but you’ll miss out on some things that you might have enjoyed — and that, I think, is all the speaker was trying to say.

saraconcoco:

lesserjoke:

“Saying “I don’t like Rap/Country/Science Fiction/Nonfiction, etc.” is a cop-out. My response is always “I don’t like people who dismiss entire genres due to their own stubborn preconceived notions of that genre.””

—

Mara Wilson (via megansdixon)

Well excuuuuuuse me for trying to find patterns in my behavior/tastes. -___-

I think the speaker was saying there’s always the chance you might like something that’s in the genre you’re dismissing, or at least that’s what I got from the quote. (Basically that it’s more honest to say, “I tend not to like things that are X” than “I don’t like anything that’s X.”)

i just recently started following you, and i’m really glad i did! i’ve been having some trouble coming up with a topic for an essay, but these couple of posts/reblogs on accents definitely helped me make a decision! especially on the bits about how it is linked to identity; i can relate so much with that, being bilingual and living abroad thus having my “accent” come up a lot in conversation with the native speakers. RANDOMLY THANKING YOU FOR THE INSPIRATION!?! wahh

Haha, awesome! I’m glad I could help by passing those things along. And seriously, accent is very often linked to people’s identity, which is why it’s highly problematic to ask someone to “lose” their accent when they move somewhere else. Rosina Lippi-Green’s book English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination is a great overview of these sorts of topics, if you’re looking for sources.

iamawug:

lesserjoke:

iamawug:

lesserjoke:

I just came across that Brandon Sanderson quote for the first time just now, but I really agree with the message it sends. Obviously your interpretation of a novel shouldn’t lead you to call other people’s interpretations wrong, and you should be very careful about presentation if your version is in any way going to be interpreted as official (like if you’re designing the cover art or adapting the book into a movie, for instance). But with these qualifications aside, I agree with Sanderson completely.

This is incredibly relevant to the recent reactions of Hunger Games fans to the casting of Amandla Stenberg as Rue, of course. It’s not inherently wrong for you to picture a character differently than other people do or than the author intended, but that also means it’s wrong to denounce other people’s interpretations as incorrect. (Or to say, as some particularly racist people did on Twitter, that Rue’s character “meant less” because of her skin color in the movie.) It also means that the film’s producers needed to be very careful about how they portrayed Rue and other characters, since a film adaptation gives a fairly heavy sense of legitimacy to its version of events. Whether they truly were as careful as they should have been is an open question, in my mind.

But back on the topic of language, Sanderson’s quote also reminded me of a post about Harry Potter from my language tolerance blog, which I don’t think I’ve shared on Tumblr (or at least not in its entirety). Yep, just checked — I posted part of it here last year, soon after I first made a Tumblr, and it didn’t get any likes or reblogs on it then. Now that I have a few more followers, I think I feel justified in sharing it again!

Before discussion: do you value personal interpretation more than written indications?

I’d be hypocritical if I didn’t — I quite frequently picture something at least somewhat differently than how the author indicated it originally. (Example: every time I read The Hobbit, I always picture Rivendell to the north of the Shire and the Lonely Mountain to the west, even though that’s quite explicitly not where they’re described in the text or shown on the accompanying maps. I don’t do this on purpose, but I can’t seem to change how I picture them, either. And I don’t think it discredits my interpretation that the author quite clearly suggests something different.)

Sometimes this makes me have a very different interpretation than the author intended, and sometimes it makes me miss out on an interesting theme or nuance in the story that I might have gotten if I’d have been reading more closely. That’s basically how I would describe people who somehow missed the written indication that Rue and most of the people in her District were black. I think it’s a more powerful story if you pick up on that, but I don’t think your experience of the story is any less legitimate if you don’t.

Personally, I tend to see an author as the “god” of their novel.  I feel like a lot of things not expressly described in a book are fair game for your imagination, and I also think that if you are just reading something and not discussing it, then personal interpretation is paramount to everything.  But, I feel like when there are objective facts expressed in a book, adherence to these facts become very critical in any sort of external discussion/presentation.

For example, assume that I read Harry Potter and completely glossed over the fact that he has green eyes; I think he has blue eyes.  This is how I see Harry in my head, and in my head, that is completely fine and dandy…certainly I’ve missed all of the cues regarding how people associate him with Lily because they have the same eye color, but it’s sort of one of those, “If you don’t know you’ve lost something, you haven’t lost anything at all.”

HOWEVER, let’s assume I now go on tumblr, or facebook, or meet a friend IRL or whatever and I decide to discuss Harry Potter.  At some point in this discussion, for whatever reason, the eye color of Harry comes up and I start talking about Harry’s eyes being blue.  My friend is completely and utterly bewildered by what I am saying because in the book, it is expressly stated that Harry’s eyes are green.  He states as such and we argue back and forth a bit about it and then he shows me objective evidence of Harry’s green eyes by citing written passages in the book.  Now, for the sake of discussion (I’m not saying that I have to change the ideas in my head), doesn’t it seem more logical that I should defer to the objective evidence that the author has given as opposed to making my friend defer to my subjective interpretation of Harry’s eye color?

Nah. Obviously we don’t agree on this point, but I would say you don’t have to defer at all. I’d think you’d be perfectly justified in telling your friend essentially what you’ve said here, that that’s just not how you picture the character. From here on out, of course, you shouldn’t argue with people that Harry’s eyes really are blue, just like I don’t argue with people that the Lonely Mountain is really in the west. (Since that’s a position that has support only in your own head, and not textually.) But I don’t think you have to concede that you were wrong in your interpretation. I think it’d be perfectly fine to “agree to disagree” — noting that your friend seems to have something closer to the author’s intention in mind, but that your version still has its own legitimacy.

onebilliontastesandtunes:

Joy is in the ears that hear: “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open. ” — Albus…

lesserjoke:

From my blog, Language Hippie:

Language diversity and tolerance might not seem to immediately apply to the adventures of a young boy wizard, but I think the [Harry Potter] series can actually teach us a lot. Anyone who has both read the books and watched the movies has surely noticed some…

I think in the movies they pronounce accio like “aksio” which, unlike the other two options, isn’t attested in any dialect of Latin. Interesting decision…

Actually, I believe the movies pronounce “accio” as “akkio” while the audiobooks prefer “assio”. I’ve always said “achio” (like someone sneezing) myself. The issue stands that none of these is inherently incorrect. There’s nothing wrong with preferring the spells to have latinate pronunciations, but there’s nothing wrong about not preferring that, either.

Edited to add: Harry summons his Firebolt with “akkio” at 6:04 in this clip: http://youtu.be/cV2E41Q6OvY?t=6m4s . Interestingly, all of the top comments on that clip are of people debating the pronunciation of this exact spell. And my response to all of them would be that they’re all right.

iamawug:

lesserjoke:

I just came across that Brandon Sanderson quote for the first time just now, but I really agree with the message it sends. Obviously your interpretation of a novel shouldn’t lead you to call other people’s interpretations wrong, and you should be very careful about presentation if your version is in any way going to be interpreted as official (like if you’re designing the cover art or adapting the book into a movie, for instance). But with these qualifications aside, I agree with Sanderson completely.

This is incredibly relevant to the recent reactions of Hunger Games fans to the casting of Amandla Stenberg as Rue, of course. It’s not inherently wrong for you to picture a character differently than other people do or than the author intended, but that also means it’s wrong to denounce other people’s interpretations as incorrect. (Or to say, as some particularly racist people did on Twitter, that Rue’s character “meant less” because of her skin color in the movie.) It also means that the film’s producers needed to be very careful about how they portrayed Rue and other characters, since a film adaptation gives a fairly heavy sense of legitimacy to its version of events. Whether they truly were as careful as they should have been is an open question, in my mind.

But back on the topic of language, Sanderson’s quote also reminded me of a post about Harry Potter from my language tolerance blog, which I don’t think I’ve shared on Tumblr (or at least not in its entirety). Yep, just checked — I posted part of it here last year, soon after I first made a Tumblr, and it didn’t get any likes or reblogs on it then. Now that I have a few more followers, I think I feel justified in sharing it again!

Before discussion: do you value personal interpretation more than written indications?

I’d be hypocritical if I didn’t — I quite frequently picture something at least somewhat differently than how the author indicated it originally. (Example: every time I read The Hobbit, I always picture Rivendell to the north of the Shire and the Lonely Mountain to the west, even though that’s quite explicitly not where they’re described in the text or shown on the accompanying maps. I don’t do this on purpose, but I can’t seem to change how I picture them, either. And I don’t think it discredits my interpretation that the author quite clearly suggests something different.)

Sometimes this makes me have a very different interpretation than the author intended, and sometimes it makes me miss out on an interesting theme or nuance in the story that I might have gotten if I’d have been reading more closely. That’s basically how I would describe people who somehow missed the written indication that Rue and most of the people in her District were black. I think it’s a more powerful story if you pick up on that, but I don’t think your experience of the story is any less legitimate if you don’t.