(Source: mellonball, via annie-banks)
"
You want to say Hi to the cute girl on the subway. How will she react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because she’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for women to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win her over with charm or flattery. Believe what she’s signaling, and back off.
[…]
So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.
"— Phaedra Starling’s Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced (via airportlife)
(Source: lostgrrrls, via arminaa8)
zlot:
This will basically just be me reblogging my ‘mary x lavinia’ tag, but I don’t even care. THE WORLD NEEDS THIS!
The world DOES need this. Signal boost!
YES PLEASE
So I woke up this morning in a pool of my own blood.
Wait, let me back up.
Hi, my name is Cara and I’m a 21 year old woman. Every 28 days, give or take, I have a period. And it fucking sucks. Today, was one of those where I take from the 28 day cycle. I wasn’t due for another period for at least a week, but considering that my period is pretty much permanently irregular, I get to wake up a lot of mornings in a pool of my own blood. Hmm. Lovely.
I then proceed to dump my sheets, my underwear, and my pajamas in my laundry room in a tub filled with cold water, with the hopes that this time I haven’t ruined them permanently.
What next? Well, a shower of course! To wipe off the smell of rotting blood from my body! Squeaky clean and towel fresh I have about a two minute window before the volcano of blood begins to erupt again from my vagina.
What will it be today? A piece of chlorinated toilet paper cardboard with a string that I get to shove up my hole wherein the blood will sit and rot until the next time I can shove another piece of chlorinated cardboard up the same hole? Or, a plastic lined toilet paper diaper attached to my underwear that causes rug burn to my vaginal area when I walk? Well the later requires less coordination, and it is early, so I guess I’ll be sitting in a period diaper today. The best ever.
Of course, I could always just get birth control, and lessen this whole shit. But 1) I can’t afford it 2) I can’t ask my dad to pay for it because, guess what? Just like the men who run my government, my father correlates birth control with sexual promiscuity! Thus, sitting on my rotting blood, undergoing severe cramps that have on more than one occasion caused me to black out, it is! (Not that birth control is such a walk in the park either, our bodies have to learn to deal with the hormones and other chemicals and consequences that birth control entails.)
Then, I get to go to class, where I have to pretend that I am not a leaky faucet of blood and tissue. I get to sit in Calculus, and if heaven forbid, I need an additional pad, I have to be discrete about it, so as not to offend the men’s gentle sensibilities to the fact that I am the one dropping tissues and blood from my body through my vagina.
I once asked a male to take me to the pharmacy so that I could pick up (GASP) pads, or as we like to call it “feminine products” (again, so as not to offend the gentlemen’s overly sensitive natures) and had him equate me talking about my period to him talking about his erections.
ARE
YOU
FUCKING
KIDDING
ME
No.
This is nothing like your fucking erection’s. I don’t derive any enjoyment from this. I can’t mentally control any ounce of this entire process. I can’t masturbate my problem away. My period does not end in orgasm.
It stays. For at least five days in my case. Draining blood out of my body. Causing me severe cramps, making me irritable -not because I’m uncomfortable (which mind you, would be reason enough) - but because my hormones are all over the place, bloating me up to two sizes larger than I normally am, I have to actively fight not to smell like a fish market, and on top of that, you want me to be hush-hush about this? Because it’s icky for you?
And this is not an attack on that one man, this is an attack on ALL MEN who on top of sitting on their throne of gender privilege want me to stay quiet and be content about the fact that five days out of every month I get to undergo this happiest of joys.
And then, these very same men have the audacity to get annoyed because we don’t want to listen to their bullshit complaining about traffic? Or whatever other meaningless story they happen to tell us while our bodies are actively fighting against us? Then we get to be the butt of their tired-ass jokes? Sorry, I am most certainly not sorry.
I repeat NO. I say women come out of the period closet and say, “You know what, this happens to me. Every. Fucking. Month. And it’s terrible. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY MORNING.” Because the truth is, if I live in a country where Viagra is covered by medical insurance, but birth control isn’t, I can no longer keep denying that I live in a country that is actively waging a war on women. And if I live in a country that is actively waging war on my sex, the least I am going to do is break patriarchal social propriety to inform anyone and everyone of the shit biological process I was BLESSED enough to be born into.
Hello, my name is Cara, I’m a 21 year old woman, and today I’m on my period. Let me fucking tell you about it.
Hey can this woman run for Councilwoman
or Congress
or President
or World Leader
WHICHEVER, SHE’S GOT MY VOTE
"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me, but they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim, they all want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe. But even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us because America needs to set an example for the entire world."
—
Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton
Great speech by Hilary Clinton. We also need to keep in mind that while we are calling for America to “set an example” this must not, and can not translate into “Americans telling women in other countries how to fight for their own rights” and keep this as a focus on analyzing what is going on in America, and even how America exports damaging and exotifying images & beliefs about other women all over the world. We can set an example by handling our business in house while still aknowledging our complicity in the subjagation of the “exotic other” overseas that we do on a daily basis.
(via newwavefeminism)
Excellent quote, excellent commentary.
(via 14kgoldnyc)
(via bookh8r)
(Source: missprunesandprisms)
EVERYONE gets niqab and burka the wrong way round in the West. And when it’s large media organizations, it’s really inexcusable.
SO USEFUL.
(via puckling)
I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this —But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it. - Vita Sackville West to Virginia Woolf
Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.--Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville West
(via zlot)
