moniquill:

daisiespastapizza:

chandeluresinitaly:

uwu:

you guys

this is me

gpoy

(Holy fuck this one girl I know really thinks this though.)

It took me a little while to figure out why this post bothered me so much.

But then I thought back to the crisis intervention training I get at work.

This post pathologizes attention-seeking behavior.

Attention-seeking behavior is not pathological.

Attention and validation are basic human needs. When we are denied them, we seek out means of gaining them. We will -to a fucking one- do this in more and more desperate and transparent ways the more we are denied attention and validation from others.

If someone is exhausted, and they seek out sleep, we don’t vilify them for attending to this need.

If someone is stick, and they seek out medicine, we don’t vilify them for attending to this need.

If someone is hungry and they seek out food, we don’t vilify them for attending this need.

If someone is cold, and they seek out warmth/shelter, we don’t vilify them for attending this need.

If someone is bored, and they seek out entertainment, we don’t vilify them for attenting this need.

Yet when someone is feeling socially isolated and invalidated, we vilify them for seeking out attention - often it doesn’t even matter HOW they’re going about it.

If you were starving on a small desert island, and all you had around was a box of Twinkies, there are few people in this world who would vilify you for eating said box of Twinkies. After all, nothing else was available to you. You had no means of obtaining anything other than Twinkies at this time and place. It was Twinkies or continuing to starve.

People who vilify attention-seekers are quick to point out that the attention they get via their actions isn’t ‘real’ or ‘meaningful’ or ‘healthy’ or whatever term they most prefer for declaring it invalid. This is akin to telling the above starving person that the Twinkies are not nutritious. Of fucking course the Twinkies aren’t nutritious. No one is claiming that the Twinkies will be as healthful and satisfying as a balanced four course gourmet meal. But they’re all that’s available. It’s Twinkies or starve.

It’s ‘Now people will write nice things about me!’ because otherwise no one will.

And this is not in any way pathological.

It’s attending a basic human need. As real and relevant as the need for food and shelter.

Making fun of people who are seeking attention, or socially punishing them because their means of gaining attention are transparent to you, or because you think that they don’t deserve the attention they’re getting for said efforts, or because you think that ‘they should be doing more constructive things to get better-quality attention’ is counterproductive. Unless you personally intend to sit down with them and give them life-skills lessons in how to gain TRUE DEEP MEANINGFUL POSITIVE attention… fuck off. And sometimes even then, because they might possess those skills just fine, and be getting plenty of that kind of attention, and might be tearing into that box of attention Twinkies because sometimes you just want a fucking Twinkie and that’s not pathological either.

Next time you feel the need to mock/deride/scold someone for being an attention-seeker, consider to yourself why this is your knee-jerk reaction.

codalion:

zesticola:

“No matter Hollywood’s attempt to convey moral ambiguity, the viewer is obviously intended to side with Xavier when it all comes down. But the way most of the X-Men films have portrayed human aggression toward mutants resonates a little closely with, y’know, real life violence and oppression toward people of color, towards queer and gender non-conforming people, women. These are types of oppression which do not afford the privilege of a tolerant, “oh someday they’ll learn” attitude. As someone who supports the autonomy of communities to come together to defend themselves, ESPECIALLY against direct physical threats, it’s really hard to villanize someone like Magneto who, as portrayed in this most recent film, just wants the basic right to exist without conforming his identity or experience to a non-mutant expectation - someone who, as a Holocaust survivor, knows the extremes of human intolerance, someone who is expected to overlook his experience and try having faith in humanity again”

—

A Tiny Valve

this.

(via strengthofourlimbs)

And this is why Charles Xavier is a sheltered cock.

(via fussyfangs)

so, so true (although I interpreted the film as the heroic journey of Magneto, esp. with the ending scene, despite what the writers intended the audience to take away from the film)

Whoa I was totally left with the opposite! I think they pointed out frequently that Charles has had sheltered, privileged little life. The people that went with Magneto knew what it felt like to marginalized: Mystique, a sex worker, a Jewish dude, that…windy person who I didn’t think was Caucasian, and the demon dude that would stick out anywhere?

I think the most “Magneto is right” part is when Charles goes “They’re just following orders”. It’s such an awful thing to say, especially to a Holocaust survivor, and that is one of the mantras that is pretty famously attached to war but I would say ESPECIALLY WWII (correct me if I’m wrong). But especially in this context it’s like “REMEMBER NAZIS”. That one moment really hit home for me that Charles can never really understand, even though he’s brilliant, even though he can read people’s minds and understands so much (again, correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that was even a line in the movie?). 

It just really made it clear to me, and to Magneto I think, that “Charles, with all his privilege, with all his money, will never understand.” It was so painful and enraging to me! Weren’t some of the most painful parts how disturbingly unfeeling he was to his SISTER? For me, every time it happened it was clear that he didn’t understand what she was feeling at all. 

Even his THESIS was like “our ancestors killed the lower species” and still his mind does not connect any dots to the trouble there. Charles is simultaneously very deep but also painfully shallow! Unrealistic and lacking a true understanding! (Using his powers to hit on girls? Invading people’s privacy rather casually for his own means?). If I’m not mistaken, his goal was to be a professor! At a very prestigious (RICH AND EXCLUSIVE) college! While on the surface this seems very nice it’s also pretty bourgeoisie and pretentious and not very practical/pragmatic.

I was left going “MAGNETO IS RIGHT FOREVER” and AT BEST “This is an ambiguous movie”. I mean maybe I’m biased to think this way because I’m a minority but that is literally how I took it = what made me so happy about the film.

(via missveryvery)

Excellent commentary. I’ve been following X-Men comics forever (srsly, like 17 years, I’m not kidding) and I’d never given half a shit about Xavier before this film. At first I was scared I’m just that fucking shallow and the cute Scottish guy was blinding me, but in retrospect I realized it’s because they basically spent the whole film driving home how sheltered and spoiled and just awfully privileged he is. He’s such a Well Meaning Privileged Dude, he wants to be a champion for a minority but he doesn’t really grasp what systematic opression actually is because apart from being a mutant (and one with a inobtrusive mutation that allows him to pass, at that) the system has always worked for him and not against him, so he fails epically. It’s like he’s inventing the mutant version of mansplaining.

Seriously, if we weren’t supposed to think he was being a dickbag in all those scenes where he kept telling Raven to dial back the freaky blue look, I don’t know what the fuck else they were in the movie for.

(But the windy dude is played by a Spanish actor, as in a Spaniard, not Latino, so he’s actually white… but at the same time, if they didn’t want to exotify him in a ~hawt Mediterranean guy, olé flamenco~ kind of way I really don’t get the point of casting a foreign actor and then not giving him ANY lines because his English sucks or whatever, so the point still stands, I guess.)

Some Marvel writers have favored Magneto over the years, but I think X-Men: First Class actually took one of the most sympathetic lenses on his radical and resistance-based worldview that the X-Men canon ever has: when Charles pleads with Erik that the soldiers are “just following orders,” I don’t think audiences are supposed to do anything but cringe at Charles’s horrible, privileged, ruinous gaffe.  Nor to perceive that Erik’s concern for Raven and belief she’ll be happier living as herself is anything but sincere and idealistic.  It’s definitely Erik Lehnsherr’s tragic arc, but secondarily it’s Charles Xavier’s, I think, as it’s sort of the side-by-side stories of How Pain and Oppression Drove Erik Lehnsherr to Radical Extremism and How His Own Naivete and Arrogance Destroyed Charles Xavier’s Dream for Unity.  It’s the opposite of what I feared — what sucks in the long term is that even if that’s so, X-Men canon proves the tone-argument viewpoint of Professor X “right” and the angry viewpoint of Magneto “wrong.”  But that was always inevitable with Magneto — I love him, he is my favorite Marvel character, but I know that validating his beliefs as anything but tragically-vengeful at best would undermine the whole pleasant status quo of Marvel morality.

On the other hand, when it comes to non-allegorical oppression, the movie’s abysmal, and that’s the problem that really sticks with me.  I didn’t know Riptide was a white Spaniard, so I’m pleased to hear that; however, Darwin was fridged and Angel could’ve been taken in a “her oppression as a Latina stripper has made her sick of oppression” direction but instead came off as “evil skanky Latina stripper.”  When it came to real oppressed minorities, X-Men: First Class did shit-all.  So while I’m glad it did well by the allegory, the actual subtext of the casting choices was horrible.

accordingtosami:

coeus:

laliberty:

By Joe’s (STFUConservatives) asinine logic, my support of gays and pot-smokers peacefully living as they wish is illegitimate because I am neither? 

What a lonely, divided world it would be if acceptance and tolerance are inefficacious concepts, and unity can only be attained through unconditional fellowship and absolute alignment of values and beliefs.

(h/t coeus)

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I was confused about it, and I just shook it off and moved on with life. 

I wonder what ridiculous things we would come up with if we extended that logic further. 

I can’t like SUVs and BMWs because I don’t drive. (?) 

I’ll take missing the point for 500, Alex.

No one said your support for anything you yourself do not do makes it illegitimate. It’s just a really douchey move to have an overarching need to reinforce that you yourself do not do something even though you support it. It’s like the ridiculousness of saying “no homo” after expressing fondness or admiration for a guy. “I support gay rights, but don’t think I’m one of those dirty ball divers!” There’s nothing illegitimate about your support, you just look like a condescending asshole when you have to qualify how much more *awesome* you are because you don’t smoke/wouldn’t get an abortion/aren’t gay. Or that you’re such a special snowflake for supporting freedom or equality because it doesn’t apply to you. It’s like asking for a candy bar because you’re doing something any basic human being should do. Just because a law that infringes on peoples rights doesn’t infringe on yours personally doesn’t mean you get some sort of award for not supporting said law.

asexualheart:

nethdugan:

misterstibbons:

but-for-the-grace:

fussyfangs:

drewmaggard:

anneime:

the only important thing the queer community strives for

i’m also not comfortable with making mimicking heterosexual lifestyles the major focus of what it means to be queer

we’re supposed to queer marriage not have marriage straighten us. i think it’s a real danger and legitimate point of discussion to say “okay well what are we looking for beyond marriage?”

I’m gonna use this to piggyback off into something that’s been bugging me.

I’m getting p. sick of the idea that wanting to get married and acquire kids and grow old together is heteronormative, because, uh.

1. I want that

2. I want to marry my boyfriend and adopt children and grow old together and have nerd grandchildren that I can shock by dragging out my fanfictions written in my scandalous youth

3. I’m not heteronormative

4. Domesticity is not heteronormative

5. Please don’t tell me how to be queer

reblogging for what erik said

And legal marriage carries with it a slew of legal benefits which just aren’t open to unmarried couples, so it’s not like the only purpose of legalizing marriage is for the warm rainbow fuzzies, but because not having the right to full and equal marriage under the law robs a lot of couples of those same benefits.

If you don’t like same sex marriage, don’t get one. That goes for queer people as much as everyone else. Did you know that there’s plenty of straight people who like the idea of marriage as much as the the first two posters? Also, you two, some same sex marriage IS heterosexual.

So, what Charles and Erik said. 

Should we also stop breathing air since straight people do that? Should we never visit places inhabited by primarily heterosexual people? 

When we say marriage is a “human right,” we mean it should be available to all of us, gay or straight or anything else, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. That goes as much for the queer haters as it does for the straight haters.

And please don’t minimize the work being done on OTHER things. We’ve gotten hate crimes legislation passed. We’re working on workplace equality. We now have tons of resources for homeless LGBTQ people that we never had before. We’re working on educating people and making more safe spaces for queer people. Just because we’re celebrating a victory for marriage equality in one more state doesn’t mean we’re all going to sit on our asses from now on, saying, “Well, we can marry in New York. Now queers are equal to everyone else!”

(Source: dragonhugsdeactivedgay)

sharpclause:

genderbitch:

But if you abort cuz you don’t want your kid to be gay, trans, faab or disabled (and that includes autistic) then you’re aborting for bigoted reasons and you are a bigot.

I don’t have a problem with you aborting. I have a problem with you being an heterosexist, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist or any -ist piece of shit.

I won’t block your abortion, even if you are a bigot. But I damn well will criticize your bigotry.

No.

Just no.

NO.

This is what I was saying was going to turn into a shitstorm.

I chose abort because I don’t want to pass on disability. I am childfree in part because I don’t want to pass on disability.

I did not want to pass MS on to another generation. I did not want someone else to suffer with bipolar disorder, especially to suffer with it while their parent suffered, because I know exactly how shitty that can be. Both of these disabilities are HIGHLY PREVALENT in my family and are not easy to live with. I watched a large swath of my family die from complications arising from MS. Even if I could somehow not pass along the likelihood of that illness, I aborted because I didn’t want to have a child who would be forced to watch their parent suffer and die. It’s highly likely that I’ll have this disease and never even be diagnosed because I can’t afford to see a doctor.

Jesus fucking Christ, if I’d seen this bullshit when I was pregnant, and feeling suicidal, I would have gone through with taking my own life.

You want to call it bigotry? Fuck you. It’s not the same fucking thing as not wanting a gay child, or a trans child, or even not wanting an autistic child or a child with Down’s Syndrome. MS is slaughtering my family, I wasn’t going to offer up another life to this disease.

FUCK YOU.

Experiences are not universal. People make choices in their lives based on a variety of needs. Not all of these choices arise from bigotry. Being judgemental about it leads to actual pain and suffering for real people. FUCK YOU.

nimself:

EYEWTKAS: There is no such thing as Bi-Sexual.

talldarkbishoujo:

nimself:

grimjaw:

Ok i tried to read all the reblogs, my opinion on this is pretty simple, i dont think things should get labeled, love is love, but society labels things so its accepted. If you’re bi, you just have a larger choice on which partner you are going to have, and even if you choose that partner, you’re attraction for both sex will still be there. I like to call bisexuals people lovers lol, they just love the human species regardless of sex, they will get down and dirty either missionary or scissor lol. 

Now you can be straight, gay, bi, you will get AIDS because of unprotected sex so i dont get the last part of that post. To me theres no such thing as straight, gay or bi, just love, but ehh in society in the dating seen you may have to use the label to tell others what you are interested in. Idk if this is what the discussion is about but w.e take it as a reblog about love and labels hahahahaa.

Wow, way to completely erase non-binaries and intersex people. No, bisexuals only love two genders/sexes. That’s what bi means, 2. PANsexuals love all.

This is somewhat of a logical fallacy, and it’s sort of an irritating one. Some bisexuals love “only” two genders. For others, however, the “bi” in bisexual is defined not in terms of math, but in likeness/sameness. This is how I personally define my bisexuality. I’m attracted to genders like mine (I am a cis woman), and genders which are different from mine. But I’m not attracted to all possible permutations and expressions of genders, which is why I feel uncomfortable with the pan label for myself.

The term isn’t nearly as cut and dried as a lot of people on all sides assume it is. My personal policy is to ask people how they define their particular identity, rather than working off my own assumptions.

First: Did you read the original post? I bolded the complaint now. “both sex”

That is the problem.

Saying “both sexes” or “both genders” is incredibly bigoted and completely erases intersex and non-binary people.

Also: “bi” isn’t mathematic. It’s an English (this is the language we’re talking about, we aren’t talking about labels in other languages) prefix that means “two”. Biweekly, once every two weeks. Bicycle, two wheels. Bilingual, two languages.

I don’t know of anything where it has meanings involving “in likeness/sameness”.  Have you heard of the labels multisexual or spectrasexual? Feel free to come up with your own, though know that polysexual has risks of being conflated with polyamory so you may want to avoid confusion there.

From what I’ve seen, the main argument of “bisexuals can be attracted to more than two!” comes from “I don’t want to have to explain non-binary genders when I tell people what my sexuality is. You know, like non-binary people have to do EVERY TIME THEY HAVE TO ASK PEOPLE TO USE THE RIGHT PRONOUNS AND REFER TO THEM CORRECTLY.” You have my sympathies on the proviso that you don’t have enough spoons to handle explaining this. Otherwise? Not so much.

(Source: adamadjective)

sottovoice:

I’ve read some A+ queer critiques of ways in which the It Gets Better campaign is problematic (from what I remember, it primarily boiled down to “you’re telling kids that it can’t be better now, and that they need to move out of rural areas”) and I have a hard time with seeing Dan Savage uncategorically praised as a savior (he has a long and storied history of fat-phobic, transphobic, biphobic, misogynistic, race-baiting comments and general douchery).

But I think that the feelings and intentions behind people’s participation in the It Gets Better campaign are positive, after spending hours watching videos when they were first collected. I find myself saying this a lot lately, but as a gay kid who emphatically did not want to admit to anyone, including herself, that she was a gay kid — I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have had a resource like this. To have been able to watch videos of real queer people talking about their lives. I knew no one who was openly gay until my last few years of high school, when two boys came out. There were two of them in a school of 1200 students; there were no out girls, and I knew no queer adults. The only media representations that I had at my fingertips were Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, neither of which I identified with. So the thought of having YouTube, and homemade videos of people discussing their experiences and their adult lives… It blows my mind.

This ad made me cry when I saw it on TV last night. It aired at 8:05 on a Tuesday night on a major broadcast network, during the commercial break for a show that has, from what I can tell, an audience that includes a lot of families and young queer or questioning kids, and that is just — goddamn.

notaiden:

Media does more for public perception than any law ever could.  Sure, ENDA may mean I can’t be fired for being gay or trans, but it wouldn’t stop me from being beat up.  Hate crime laws only mean that my attackers get a longer sentence.  That doesn’t do me any good when I’m lying half-dead in a hospital room.  They’re not a deterrent.  Being seen as an actual human being is.

Look at how much ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and ‘Will and Grace’ changed the perception of gay friends.  In terms of race, ‘The Cosby Show’ did amazing things for the perception of African-Americans.  All of the shows brought with them their own problems (gay men as a fashion accessory and ‘good’ African-American vs ‘bad’ African-American), but they still changed things.  It’s something people tend to dismiss because “it’s only television”, but they’re failing to recognise just how much impact a well written show can have.  You’re reaching far more people with a popular show than any protest or out reach campaign could hope for.

crackly:

(assuming this secret is sarcastic)

Glee obviously HAS stories about women, but they tend to revolve around men or motherhood or if you’re fat, food.  (Even santana/brittany ends up coming back around to men somewhat).  Which is really problematic.  I don’t even know how frequently it passes the bechdel test. 

For example, the boys storylines about football are about football and male pride and being the best and being awesome and wanting to win.  Compare this to the girl’s storylines about cheerleading which are actually just about either Sue wanting to be better than Will or Quinn wanting her boyfriend back or Quinn wanting to be back on top of the social pyramid so she can get an awesome boyfriend and pretend last year’s motherhood trope didn’t exist. 

There was briefly a platonic female friendship on the show, Mercedes and Quinn, but it hasn’t been mentioned in over a season.  The newest female friendships are Mercedes, Rachel, and Kurt which only exists because of Kurt, and Rachel and Quinn which only existed because Quinn was acting as the jealous girlfriend archetype.  Santana and Brittany are a female friendship I guess only they have sex so not really.  Tina doesn’t speak enough to have a female friendship other than waaaaaaay back in season 1 where it was implied that she and mercedes were besties (though Mercedes has been bumped up to sassy black girl sidekick to Rachel now so doesn’t get to be around Tina anymore). 

Not to mention the fact that the madonna episode about female empowerment (which still revolved around sex) was just one episode with a theme that disappeared.  Like tina’s feminism was gone after that 10 second clip.  Just another example of Glee’s tokenism at work. 

So yes.  Glee has “female empowerment” and storylines about women, but at the end of the day they’re not REALLY about women. 

(With the possible exception of Rachel’s I want to be the best at everything storyline but that always seems to get co-opted by her desire to be with Finn)

trannsexualferox:

Because justjasper requested it, new rebloggable Q&A.

(Click through if you want to check out the links).

(Source: transsexualferox)