“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”

Ursula K Le Guin, from What Women Know

One night we had a thrilling summer storm… We hadn’t been in the house long, and it was the first time in this house we’d had to close all the windows. In the morning I smelled gas, strong, unmistakable. “I smell gas,” I said to my husband. “I don’t smell it,” he said. He had a friend come over. “Why are you having a friend come over,” I asked, “when it doesn’t matter if he can smell it or not, and none of us can fix it?” His friend didn’t smell it, either. I called the gas company. The gas company employee didn’t smell it, either. He waved his reader around and it blasted off in three places, substantial leaks behind the stove and in the basement. “Always trust a woman’s nose,” the gas company employee said.

Yes, I thought, believe us.

Then, No, I thought, I’m not a fucking witch. Believe anyone who smells gas. If someone smells gas, believe them.

– Jane Dykema, What I Don’t Tell My Students About “The Husband Stitch”

the most advantageous position you could possibly hold is to be perceived as a victim of those you hold power over. to be granted "immunity" from the accusation of doing wrong.

people are tagging this with variations of "cis white women" and I just wanna say: you get it.

this is what "karens" are: cis white women who understand the power of perceived victimhood, and wield it against black men in particular.

this is why so many cis white feminists (TERFs and other radical feminists especially) seem so much more interested in wallowing in all the ways patriarchy makes life scary for them, and all the black and homeless and disabled and trans and otherwise marginalized people who are threats to them, than they are in actual liberation.

this is why they tend to avoid thinking or talking about the ways in which they benefit from the oppression of, or hold power over, other marginalized people- even if they spend time talking about patriarchy, or pay lipservice to racism or other forms of oppression in the abstract.

this is why they tend to perceive guilt as "an attack": it threatens their power as the presumed victim, the person who is supposed to be so powerless she is simply incapable of harm.

the white supremacist patriarchal understanding of womanhood is that cis white women are helpless, and fundamentally incapable of being autonomous. they are also valuable, as potential wives and mothers, and thus worth coming to the rescue for.

this is a bad thing in that it revokes autonomy, but it's a double edged sword: there is a power in being seen as incapable of harm, and deserving of sympathy and protection regardless of situation. and it is very, very difficult to give that power up.

ALT

(via @necromancy-enthusiast)

I used to be an academic advisor at a state college and one of my performance reviews said a couple students thought I was mean via email. So I started adding (!) a lot and never had that complaint again.

Let us know if you need help.

Vs.

Let us know if you need help!

I really hate this shitty ‘doom-and-gloom/everyone’s corrupt/there will never justice’ mindset.

According to L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, they fined Universal as much as they possibly could as permitted by law, but “outdated laws limit fine amounts and aren't equitable across offenders, especially big corporations.” [X]

The problem is how the laws are written, which can be amended.

This isn’t the fault of some deep corruption in the LA government that had them taking money under the table to avoid fining Universal or something.

additionally! it kept the strikes in the public conscious! in a way that was favorable to the strikers, even! a way to keep people angry and morale higher without anyone dying! obviously the fine was disappointingly small but it isnt like $250 is the only consequence

who the fuck are these guys

I’ve never come across a fandom in almost 40 years where this wasn’t true.

when you remember an important task while going to bed at 3am

The alternative is developing really silly forensic pseudoscience so you can draw up instant answers. Sadly this is extremely popular on the internet.

I'm loving this new trend of people going to zoos and participating in animal enrichment. We use to observe large exotic animals for our entertainment, but the fact is that we are now trying to make ourselves equally as entertaining for them. It's interactive, completely parpicipatory and I would argue that eventually someone's gonna come up with something new enough that it expland ethologists understanding about how some animals think, problem solve, communicate and feel and I think its fantastic.

Human: play?

Aquatic creature from an entirely different branch of the animal tree: play!

literally fuck off lol

tumblr has doubled down and after almost a week re-reviewed MY FUCKING TRANSITION and decided it still needed a community label for sexual themes

fuck this website and fuck every person working there you pricks