okideas:

People close to me are hovering in the middle of this cartoon, and I know it’s inevitable, but it sure ain’t fun.

new game

clatterbane:

chavisory:

mathgender:

go to a random wikipedia article and replace the first noun of the first sentence with “My gender”.

“My gender is a heavy metal compilation album by various artists, released as a heavy metal tribute album to Frank Sinatra.”

“My gender is an extensible, modular, component-based C++ simulation library and framework, primarily for building network simulators.”

My gender is a parliamentary constituency in the county of Sussex.

“My gender was a Norwegian skier and pioneer of modern skiing.”

“My gender is a species of deciduous shrubs in the genus Rosa, native to forests of Europe and Siberia. It grows to 2 m. and yields edible hip fruits rich in vitamin C, which are used in medicine^[2] and to produce rose hip syrup.”

clatterbane:

feministingforchange:

misandry-mermaid:

girlinfourcolors:

moniquill:

marxistfeministsport:

george-blagden-though:

equalaccountability:

mansplainedmarxist:

When I say something that should not be controversial 

Why aren’t 50% of coal miners women? Why not 50% of janitors or pest control workers? Don’t forget front line military!
Likewise, why aren’t men 50% of college enrollment and 50% of teachers?

We should eliminate the stupid “personal choice” thing because forcing people into certain professions is way more fun.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT FORCING PEOPLE INTO PROFESSIONS
THIS IS ABOUT WOMEN GOING INTO SCIENCE BEING DISCOURAGED
THIS IS ABOUT WOMEN BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST

FIRST, WHAT GBT SAID.^

SECOND…

FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION WOMEN COAL MINERS.  BECAUSE I STUDY THEM.  AND GUESS WHAT?

Women had to fight court cases to be allowed into coal mines as workers.  Once a few women paved the way, thousands of women followed in short suit because on average, their incomes increased 500% over working as domestic workers, doing textile piecework and waitressing.  Some saw their income jump 1000%.  

Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find women have been mining coal for centuries.  They were pushed out in the Victorian period because the mansplainers of the day could tolerate women wielding such a phallic object as a shovel underground with male workers present.  And wearing pants!  Still, women disguised themselves as men to work in the mines.

Oh, and World War II.  Where did all the coal come from then?  Oh, that’s right.  Women.  Women who were expected to stand aside and let the men take their jobs when the war was over and were denied benefits when they later developed black lung.

Also, can we just talk about how absurd it is to say that women don’t make up 50% of ‘janitors’?
Gee, I wonder if that’s because when a woman is hired to be the primary cleaner and caretaker of a property, it gets called ‘housekeeping’ or ‘maidservice’ and pays less than the EXACT SAME JOB, which if done by a man is given the title ‘janitor’?

Why aren’t men 50% of college enrollment? Because men aren’t 50% of college applications. No one’s exactly sure why, but the prevailing guess? Because it’s easier for men to get a professional job without a degree. Which means it’s easier for men to earn a living wage without going into debt. Which increases the already existent wealth gap, already exacerbated by the income gap.

(And if you’ll allow me to get all snarkily gender essentialist for a moment, maybe you boys just can’t cut it in higher ed. Even those of you getting into colleges are dropping out at rates WAY higher than women. They were probably just there looking for a wife to provide for them, though, am I right? Ah, get back in the toolshed, don’t worry your silly little heads about it.)

Oh my god I want to fucking marry this entire post.

Dear. GOD. This is fantastic <3

I forgot to add before that apparently another reason women miners in Northern England were suddenly unacceptable and indecent was because it was hot down in a lot of the mines, so everyone was working topless when necessary. That really got some prudes running things in the 19th century worked up. :-|

“I’m a visual thinker, really bad at algebra. There’s others that are a pattern thinker. These are the music and math minds. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Then there’s another type that’s not a visual thinker at all, and they’re the ones that memorize all of the sports statistics, all of the weather statistics.”

— 

Temple Grandin (via theredhairing40)

She’s really… oversimplified things.  She interviewed hundreds of people about their thinking styles, and then came up with something like four or five categories for them.  I’ve read hundreds of autistic people talk about their thinking styles, and I know that they are more complex than anything Temple Grandin is willing to wrestle with.

For instance:  I am very sensing, which is a category Donna Williams came up with to describe a pre-rational kind of thought that is common in autistic people who grew up with certain severe receptive language difficulties past a certain age.  I also have the capacity for interpretive thought or I wouldn’t be having this discussion, but sensing is my dominant mode of thought by far.  I am not visual, nor auditory.  I am more tactile-kinesthetic and olfactory.  I think in sensory and pre-sensory patterns, which have nothing to do with “music and math minds” at all, because ‘pattern’ is a word with far more than one meaning.  I don’t fit any of her descriptions at all, but I swear I exist, and am autistic, and have a particular, uniquely autistic kind of mind.  I know lots of other autistic people with minds just like mine.  But will you hear Temple Grandin ever mentioning us?  I doubt it.   Too complicated.  She likes her categories neat and simple.

becausebirds:

This is the rare cardinal photographed in Dr. Larry Ammann’s back yard. It is a bilateral gynandromorph, which means it exhibits both male and female characteristics, split down the middle of its body. See additional images, that better show the split.

“The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.”

— Joanna Newsom, in a 2005 interview (here: http://arthurmag.com/2006/12/23/nearer-the-heart-of-things-erik-davis-on-joanna-newsom-from-arthur-no-25winter-02006/ ); one song on her Ys album was written when she was dealing with the death of a friend. (via youneedacat)

Oh wow those were song lyrics.  I love this!  "The Mute" by Radical Face.

Well, as a child I mostly spoke inside my head
I had conversations with the clouds, the dogs, the dead
And they thought my broken, that my tongue was coated lead
But I just couldn’t make my words make sense to them
If you only listen with your ears… I can’t get in

And I spent my evenings pullin’ stars out of the sky
And I’d arrange them on the lawn where I would lie
And in the wind I’d taste the dreams of distant lives
And I would dress myself up in them through the night
While my folks would sleep in separate beds… and wonder why

And through them days I was a ghost atop my chair
My dad considered me a cross he had to bear
And in my head I’d sing apologies and stare
As my mom would hang the clothes across the line
And she would try to keep the empty… from her eyes

So, then one afternoon I dressed myself alone
I packed my pillowcase with everything I owned
And in my head I said “goodbye,” then I was gone
And I set out on the heels of the unknown
So my folks could have a new life of their own
So that maybe I could find someone
Who could hear the only words that I’d known

So I wrote a post about the woman I called Diane.

Who’s “so NT that she’s actually in her own world and all the stereotypes of autism actually apply to her but only because she’s the total opposite of an autistic person”.  And thinks she can communicate with us really well and actually just overloads us into hell and then thinks she’s making emotional breakthroughs and shit.

And… I get a private message from someone (I won’t say who, I never reveal things like this) who knows exactly who I meant.

This always happens when I discuss her.  Even this long after the community was tiny enough for everyone to know her real name.  It’s really amazing.

phototoartguy:

Meanwhile somewhere else at the Bali zoo a pangolin carries its baby in its enclosure. The pangolin baby was born on May 31.

Picture: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

feliscorvus:

theuppitynegras:

miss-gelly:

thylegend:

I have the best hairstylist ever

That’s fucking amazing

damn

Ooooooo

holy crap

I can pontificate as well as the next autistic person with an advocacy perseveration.

patternsmaybe:

youneedacat:

But that’s not my most important contribution to the world, and it’s not my most important contribution to autistic self-advocacy.

(As usual, while this focuses on autism, it applies to lots of other things.)

I honestly think the most important contribution I can make is to dig deep inside myself, learn who I really am, and tell the world in detail that I exist.

Not because I’m somehow special or better than other people, whether nonautistic or autistic.

But because people like me are underrepresented in the autistic community, at least in this autistic community.  And because people like me matter.  And because a lot of people like me never develop the level of language skills I’ve developed.

And even though there are people like me who can be themselves in such a thorough and beautiful way that it shines like they are transparent to the light of a thousand suns…

…lots of people don’t know how to listen, and won’t see it.

So I’m here to translate the existence of people like me into a form people can’t ignore.

Someone once told me I was obsessed with ‘my issues’, in some kind of morbid and twisted way.

I had no words to tell him that I talked about these things because, in the community he and I were part of, I was the only one talking about them.  I was the only one like me who had managed to stick it out as long as I had.  Other outsiders — like-me and not-like-me but all not-like-the-mainstream-auties-there — came and went, but usually the coming was brief and the going was fast.  Because it became very clear that the existence of autistic people outside a very narrow framework wasn’t welcome.

So I made it my job to describe myself in excruciating detail all the time.

I did it so that people would understand that at least one of us wasn’t going away.

I did it so people would understand forms of autism that were not theirs.

I did it so people like me would feel a tiny bit of welcome in a mostly hostile environment.

And I continue to do things like that.

The ideas I have about advocacy and activism and words-stuff and all that… lots of people have those ideas, and lots of people can say those ideas.  And those ideas are bound to be wrong as often as they are right, because that’s what ideas are like.  They are fleeting, situational, and never connected that much to reality.

But who I am, that is important.  Not because I in particular am important, but because all of us are important.  And because it’s especially important for people who are not in the majority to find belonging somewhere.  And because it’s especially important for those who are in the majority to understand those of us who aren’t.  To understand who we are.  To accept who we are.

And because when I read Nobody Nowhere, it was the only person who had ever given me even a glimmer of hope that other people like me existed in the world.  It didn’t matter that I disagreed with her on damn near everything at times, it didn’t matter that some of what we had in common wasn’t even autism (as if it mattered what label something was), what mattered was that someone was real, and was willing to share their reality with the entire world, and their reality helped me see my own reality, because we were both highly sensing autistic people when most autistic people who write about themselves are quite the opposite of us.  We occupied the same broad area of autism.  It was luck that she was the first autistic person whose book I ran into.

I want to do for others what she did for me.

I know that I have already done for many others what she did for me, because they have told me.

I also want to expand things so that it’s not just people like me, it’s not just people like the mainstream.  I want people to understand the full spectrum, bursting with diversity and strange beauty in every color of the rainbow and many colors that are outside the realm of visible light.  I want people to know how many forms we come in, and that being different from a norm does not make us less real.

So one of the most important things we can do is learn who we are, and be ourselves with all our might.

That can be a form of activism (although anyone uncomfortable with that word certainly doesn’t have to claim it).  And it can be done by anyone, regardless of communication skills or cognitive skills.  In fact many of the best at being themselves have no language or interpretive thought.

We live in a world where being ourselves is dangerous.  Where we are hated for who we are and made to pretend we are things we are not.  We live in a world where even places that are supposedly ‘autistic space’ are really only for some kinds of autistic people.  And many of us, me included, want to make it so that it is available to all of us.

We are like a giant landscape that is beautiful and terrible, dangerous and sublime, we are rocks and trees and plants and hills, and every one of us is important.  This doesn’t mean we’re all nice, or that we’re all going to be sitting around a campfire holding hands, or even that we should be aiming for that (especially since there are autistic people who are known serial bullies and stalkers of other autistic people).  But it does mean that, just in terms of the forms autism can take, exploring our differences and similarities is a beautiful thing.

And it’s not a thing that’s done, really.  Not on any large scale.  

So I may pontificate sometimes, like all of us do.

But the really important posts are the ones where I’m just being who I am, as intense and as true as I possibly can.

And those are the really important posts when you do them, too.  Whoever you happen to be. 

The world needs us to be who we are.  It’s dangerous, and nobody can make you do what you don’t feel comfortable doing.  But don’t let anyone tell you that being who you are is unimportant, or that it has no impact.  Being you, unashamedly you, in public, has an enormous important impact you will never fully know or understand or see the consequences of.

“

Telling

Laura Hershey
What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them.
Your voice will break, your ink
spill and stain your coat.
No one will understand, their eyes become fences.
You will park yourself forever
on the outside, your differentness once and for all revealed, dangerous.
The names you give to yourself
will become epithets.

Your happiness will be called
bravery, denial.
Your sadness will justify their pity.
Your fear will magnify their fears.
Everything you say will prove something about their god, or their economic system.

Your feelings, that change day to day, kaleidoscopic,
will freeze in place,
brand you forever,

justify anything they decide to do with you.

Those with power can afford to tell their story
or not.
Those without power

risk everything to tell their story and must.

Someone, somewhere
will hear your story and decide to fight, to live and refuse compromise. Someone else will tell
her own story,
risking everything. “

Laura Hershey. Yes, this. That. Sentiment. 

veganweedsoup:

jrvmajesty:

QUEER, ILL, & OKAY, a performance series exploring the intersection of queerness and chronic illness will take place on July 5th & 6th at DfbrL8r, but WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We are into the second week of our Kickstarter to raise completion funds, which among other costs like venue fees and tech professionals, will ensure our artists get paid. Artists like those below and artists like those yet to be announced. 

Show support, share the love today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joevarisco/queer-ill-and-okay

Photographed by IAMKIAM Studios. 

OH MY GOD THIS IS INCREDIBLE

heyveronica:

jennirl:

kenlayne:

“Strange tradition from the forgotten rural years.” Bees attend keeper’s funeral, 1956.

always reblog bees

important bee news

mozzarellahighrise:

when someone tells you their favorite candy, listen. write it down if you have to. remember it. when you know they’re having a shitty day, buy it for them. be the best human you can be; buy your friends their favorite candy when they really, really need it and don’t even know it.