froelich:

there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.

she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”

the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.

only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.

that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.

sonnywortzik:

sespursongles:

That article where a law professor argues that battered women are morally entitled to kill their abusers has an interesting quote:

“Men can kill women with their bare hands, and they do. Women almost never kill men that way. They can’t. […] While very few women kill abusive men who are asleep or passed out, it’s “unfair” to charge them with first degree murder, Sheehy argues. “It’s not fair to characterize it as the most heinous form of murder, because it may be their own route to survival.”

There have probably been feminist analyses of this already, but it’s worth discussing how the concept of self-defence, especially in domestic violence cases, was designed by men to benefit men. In my country at least, your attack is only considered “legitimate self-defence” if it is a) necessary, b) immediate, c) proportionate. 

A concept of self-defence that only applies if you hurt or kill someone while they are attacking you, and if you hurt or kill them using the same weapons as them (your bare hands, if that’s what they are using) only benefits people who are likely to be attacked by people of similar size and physical strength, and is utterly useless to women.

When a bigger, stronger male beats up his much smaller wife, it’s almost impossible for her to kill him in self-defence (immediately and proportionately ie with nothing but her fists), and yet it’s the scenario through which she can hope to be acquitted or get a light sentence. That’s not a coincidence. The other two scenarios (and she will be despised if she picks either) are for her to 1) kill him later (when he can’t use his physical advantage, eg when he’s asleep or has his back turned on her), but it won’t be self-defence because it won’t be immediate. (In the Jacqueline Sauvage case, one of the main arguments against her was that she shot her husband in the back at a time when he wasn’t actively beating her up) or 2) use a weapon, but it won’t be self-defence because it won’t be proportionate. Obviously this condition also benefits men, because when a woman gets punched by her husband and she punches him back, it’s seen as a proportionate response but it shouldn’t be, because her punch (typically) won’t do nearly as much damage as his. Anything else she does (like use a weapon) to try and hurt him as much as he hurt her will be considered a disproportionate response and will mean it wasn’t self-defence.

The idea that killing your abuser in a honest face-to-face fight with your bare hands is honourable and forgivable, but killing your abuser in any other way is shameful and wrong, utterly benefits men and protects men. It’s also why poison was historically reviled as a ‘female weapon’ and as the most cowardly way to kill someone. Poison has been described as “a great equalizer” – no wonder men hated it. Men have always hated, and will keep hating, shaming, and outlawing, any form of attack through which women can compensate our disadvantage in strength and size, and they will keep praising as the only valid method of self-defence, the method that presents the smallest risk of being effectively used by women against them.

magsbanes:

me: i’m gonna keep my opinionated mouth shut for once and stay out of it

me, 20 seconds later:

caffeinewitchcraft:

writing-prompt-s:

write a story about how you became the world’s most powerfull person… by accident.

1. You learn about the butterfly effect in school. The concept is interesting, but not so interesting that you don’t fall asleep partway through the movie. You hear something distantly about a butterfly beating its wings and hurricanes. You think it will never apply to you.
2. You know now (not then) that power comes through and from favors.
3. If you had known that then you would probably not have done so many.

(This is where it starts.)

One.

There is a strange creature crossing the road behind the lecture hall. You stop on your bike and frown at it. It looks a little like a turtle, but it’s limbs are longer than any turtle you’ve ever seen. It’s stretched out on the hot asphalt, long, pale limbs clawing forward towards the small stream that runs on the other side.

 You hop off your bike and gently pick the creature up, hands under the belly of the shell like you learned from the internet.

Imagine your surprise when the shell slides off the creature instead, dropping a tiny woman onto the asphalt.

“Water,” she croaks, tiny eyes screwed shut.  Her eyelids are the size of yours which means they’re huge on her. “Please.”

(You will not know until later what exactly please means to the fae.)

You feel yourself move through your shock. You pick her up and take her to the water’s edge. She slips under the surface, pale skin flashing like the scales of a fish, and she’s gone.

You’d wonder if your roommate slipped you something this morning if she wasn’t back a moment later, pushing a small rock into your hands.

“A boon,” she says. Her eyes are large and black, suited for her underwater world. “For a favor.” She smiles, showing teeth jagged and sharp like a piranha.

When you blink, she’s gone.

You stare at the rock in your left hand. It’s smooth and worn from years in water, an interesting swirl of granite and quartz. “I wish I knew,” you tell it.

The rock ices over so fast that you don’t have time to drop it. The frost swirls across your skin, burning you where it touches, and you watch in horror as your skin turns a mottled black and blue.

 You fall to your knees from the pain and choke on a scream as the stone sinks into you, touching your bones and sending more ice through your marrow. It climbs up your arm and touches your eye, changing you vision so now that you’re see double, a strange, blue world juxtaposed next to the one you know and love.

Keep reading

eearth:

me, thinking about how deeply flawed the modern world is: this shit is bananas *deep sigh* b – a – n – a – n – a – s  😦