naamahdarling:

crayola4kids:

invizible:

cieria:

shapeshiftingpenis:

moonlandingwasfaked:

cummerslam:

zvaigzdelasas:

battlships:

the-future-now:

PayPal unveils new plans for keeping racist hate groups from using its services

  • A new report revealed that organizers of Saturday’s deadly white supremacist gathering in
    Charlottesville used PayPal to raise funds.
  • In response, PayPal released a strong statement on Tuesday condemning hate
    groups, outlining its Acceptable Use Policy and vowing to review PayPal
    users flagged by other customers.
  • The report, released Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center,
    outlined how Saturday’s “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville,
    organized by racist and neo-Nazi hate groups like Identity Evropa,
    Vanguard America and the Traditionalist Worker Party, among others,
    needed PayPal to come together. Read more (8/16/17 10:15 AM)

follow @the-future-now​

@staff even PayPal is ousting Nazis now. Discord, Skype, Google…. What’s taking Tumblr so long?

@staff

@staff

@staff

@staff

@staff

@staff

@staff

Clean up your act @staff

transkrem:

pearlcourse:

anhamirak:

irlpigmon:

transkrem:

Like, people who identify as Queer know the word is used like a slur. Trust me, we know.

So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.

Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y’all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.

Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”

So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”

And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.

So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.

Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.

And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.

The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”

Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.

Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.

And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.

But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”

And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.

“Queer is a slur” is a terf movement. Stop fucking supporting terfs just because you want to pretend like it isn’t.

Calling yourself queer is fine but like.. it’s not a good umbrella term bc it Is a slur and if you can reclaim it you can but lots of gay people are uncomfortable w it (including me, a trans woman) n u gotta respect that

“Gay” is a slur too. In fact I have never once in my life heard queer used as an insult, but I lost track of how many times I’ve heard gay used to way. And yet here you are using it as an umbrella term. In fact it’s used as an umbrella term constantly. And nobody says a word about it.

What’s the difference?

Rhetorical question. The difference is that there wasn’t a movement by terfs and similar exclusionists to make sure nobody could comfortably self-identify as gay. There was for queer, and sadly it worked on a lot of people.

I’m going to keep using it as an umbrella term. Because that’s what it is. Because it is actually the best umbrella term we’ve ever had. It sucks that so many people have been misled to the point where they’re uncomfortable hearing/reading the word queer. I won’t use it to refer to individuals unless they’ve indicated that they’re okay with that, because each person gets to choose their own labels. But for the community? It’s the most inclusive word I’ve got and I’m not letting exclusionists take it away. I’m going to keep fighting for the queer community, because it’s the only community that undeniably includes all of us.

The difference between Queer as a slur and Gay as a slur is the history behind the words. “Queer” means “weird”, whereas “gay” means “happy” in historical terms. Though both have been used as slurs, and both have been reclaimed, the reason why some people are uncomfortable with “Queer” as a catch-all term for the LGBT community is that history.

So when you refer to the LGBT community as “queer”, you’re saying that all LGBT people are “weird”. That’s why people, including me, are uncomfortable with it being a catch-all term for the community. For personal use, it’s fine, but for widespread, it’s got its problems that should be taken into consideration.

That’s actually not true. “Gay” in origin (as a label to call other people) meant “sexually perverse/deviant,” and was most prominently used on sex workers, as well as perceived gay and gnc(trans) people in the early 20th century. It was reclaimed in the exact same fashion as queer by gay men, as a purposeful distancing from the term “homosexual.”

There is actually a surviving letter written by a queer identifying person around that time discussing the shift of terms over to gay, and that not being something they liked because of the horrible connotations and it not being as good a term as queer (if I’m remembering correctly.)

The reclaiming process redefined these terms to an extent for us (though the “weirdness” was embraced as something to be proud of in the 90s, that was an important part.) but “gay” lost its negative connotations over time (though it was still hurled as a slur,) but queer was hung onto because gatekeeping bastards hated the fucking word and its inclusiveness and never let anyone forget it.

I feel just as bad when people call the community “the gay community” and yet an overwhelming amount do it. But I don’t rag on gay people who do it really because I know they use the terms comfortable to them. I also don’t hold it against people who use other terms that are more offensive but personally reclaimed, because I know they include only those who identify under that term.

When “queer community” or “queer people” is used, a) its no more offensive than any other term being blanketed, and b) it literally only includes queer people. Of you’re not queer identifying….it doesn’t include you.

Friendship, romance, childhood, Sherlock

unreconstructedfangirl:

normaldeviate:

I have a daughter who’s almost five, and this year in preschool she’s had a Best Friend. She had friends before at her previous daycare, but this one is different – whether it’s because of age or personality or something specific about the chemistry between them. Best Friend has really big feelings about my kid. Best Friend doesn’t merely squee when my kid shows up; she also gets morose when Kid doesn’t come to school (to the point of crying at home, her mom tells me), and jealous when Kid wants to play by herself or with someone else, and one time I even saw her attempt to make Kid jealous in return (it didn’t really work; Kid just got upset that she was being misunderstood). Big Feelings!

It’s been so fascinating to watch this unfold over the last year, if somewhat unnerving at times, and I’ve been working to help Kid set up good boundaries. (She’s done surprisingly well.) If we were seeing this kind of behavior in middle-childhood, we would definitely think “puppy love.” In a teen or adult, I’d have my ears perked up for signs of intimate partner violence. In a preschooler? I don’t really know. Are possessiveness or mild obsessiveness normal in friendships at this age? Is Best Friend going to look back at this intense friendship in 20 years and think, yep, that’s when I knew I was gay?

Anyway, thinking about this brought me back to that question of love and Sherlock (what doesn’t?). Possessiveness is not normal for adults in friendship – I mean, it’s not healthy in romance either, but we have a frame for understanding it. That’s what makes John’s side of the equation hard to understand: Mr. It’s All Fine Except When You Imply It About Me gets upset when Sherlock appears romantically interested in anyone else. And everything in his body language at those moments, everything in the way he talks about Sherlock on the blog, tells us he knows exactly how fucked up this is. That doesn’t suggest wedding bells, exactly, but it does raise questions we want answers to (or at least, I do).

But then there’s Sherlock, who is possessive in a really different way – a way that suggests he thinks the right and proper state of affairs is for John’s world to revolve around him. He maintains this thoughtless self-centeredness until halfway through that wedding speech in TSoT, at which point a switch flips and his love for John takes on a character that is both selfless and undeniably romantic. I’ve seen plenty of meta about how this speech serves as an accelerated puberty for Sherlock, and I think that works here. Growing up for him happens when he learns how to love like an adult. Where possessiveness is what triggers my suspicions with John, my certainty about Sherlock emerges in its absence.

Tagging @unreconstructedfangirl who had a good thread about love and friendship not long ago.

Thank you for tagging me! I love your last paragraph, SO MUCH.

Where possessiveness is what triggers my suspicions with John, my certainty about Sherlock emerges in its absence.

Yes. YES. Exactly.

However! I’m not sure I agree that possessiveness, jealousy and obsessiveness aren’t “normal” in friendship. I have felt all of those things in relationships that were clearly and unambiguously friendships, which is to say not romantic relationships (though, I must say that I am increasing unsure why these two things are somehow defined as mutually exclusive categories – why isn’t a friendship a kind of romance?). Maybe these feelings aren’t admirable, but they are real things that people feel in all kinds of relationships. Perhaps it’s not useful to view them as not normal, or unhealthy, or even as things that sort the relationship into a category of love vs. friendship where those two relationship concepts mutually exclude one another? Perhaps, as you say, the issue is learning to love in a more mature way – a way that recognises the personhood and agency of the beloved; A way that recognises the limits of one’s right to act upon those feelings in a way that curtails the freedom of the beloved.

Also? I don’t feel like the territory of friendship is so unlike the territory of love. I think those territories overlap one another in all kinds of ways and cannot be cleanly separated. The ambiguity of the relationship between John and Sherlock doesn’t bother me at all, and that is because an undefined intensity of connection that is neither one thing nor the other, or is both, feels REAL to me. It feels like a think that exists, and that I feel, and that we don’t know how to talk about because our words to describe what a relationship is excludes that territory. That unnamed land is uncomfortably unsayable, so we want to push it to a point – force it to define itself – and I think that definition would be reductive of it’s beauty and complexity. Maybe your daughter’s friend will grow up and realise that she has always loved girls… or maybe not. Who knows! What I don’t quite understand is the rage we all seem to have for applying labels that don’t quite seem to fit.

All that said, I agree with you about this difference between the character of Sherlock’s love and John’s as it is realised on the show. I think it’s why John beating Sherlock up didn’t surprise me and felt exactly in character. It’s probably why there is a draft of a controversially titled and never published post in my draft box from months ago called “John Watson, Self-obsessed Arsehole”, which is not to say that I don’t love John as a character, just that I cannot approve of his actions and think he has his head up his own arse when it comes to Sherlock.

I do think Sherlock learns to love selflessly, and I agree that John isn’t there yet, and his love is selfish. It’s why I find him harder to love than Sherlock.

But, that’s just me, maybe.

I am interested in all the points being made here and don’t want to detract from them at all, as this post relates to Sherlock, but I’m a teacher, so here are my 2 cents on preschool behavior: This behavior is completely normal on both their sides. Some kids at this age experience an intense and jealously guarded bond with one friend and others are more like butterflies flitting from friend to friend, and every shade in between those polarities. Some kids understand the jealous ones and some are completely baffled by it. However, normal isn’t always the same thing as acceptable. It is normal for children to act out aggressive feelings physically, but we still correct it, and they still have bathroom accidents at that age too, but we are guiding toward complete and consistent potty training of course. The same is true with more clingy or obsessive friendships. It is great that she loves your daughter so much, but hopefully teachers are involved in guiding her to understand that sometimes people need to play with others or by themselves. If this isn’ t guided, it can eventually manifest as exactly the kind of obsessive/possessive behavior we find in abusive relationships, but there are years and years for helping this child find balance. Learning boundaries and consent does start that young, so it is great you are helping your daughter with that. If people are treating the other girl’s behavior as cute, you might want to talk about shaping the behaviours over time, but it seems like you have a very positive relaxed attitude about the whole thing, which is lovely. (As for the point about sexuality, I haven’t seen any correlation to sexuality at all, though if the friend was a boy I’m sure people would be assigning sexual or romantic overtones to it. Sometimes the jealous behavior is a sign people look back on as ‘yep that was my first crush’ and other times it is more indicative or not having learned to share yet.)