Link reblogged from Bury my Heart at the Dump with 34,709 notes
The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys' →
For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respected, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.
Source: saltandsugarsearching
Photoset reblogged from fab fat feminist with 34,708 notes
The milkshake: This is not limited to fast food nor to milkshakes. That ‘concoction’ is the industry standard artificial strawberry flavoring found in everything strawberry flavored that isn’t naturally flavored.
Chicken nuggets: Total lies. My sister works at the Tyson plant that provides KFC and McDonalds their nuggets. There’s no ‘pink paste’ stage. ’Reflavoring’ is an injection of mostly salt into the meat in order to give it some taste because modern day chicken is nearly flavorless. If you want to disgust people, show them the conditions of the processing plants that dismantle the chickens.
The pubic hair one: You eat more of your family’s pubic hairs cooking in your own home. You think you don’t shed once you walk in your own door?
Peanut butter: This is a cold hard truth of food mass production. There will be insects. You can never get rid of them or take them out of the process. The FDA places limits on how much can be allowed into specific foods so that food manufactories don’t get lazy and just say ‘Well we can’t keep it out.’ The FDA limit helps immensely because it makes these places try to keep the insect population down through keeping things clean.
Shellac: Oh my god this is so stupid. ’Shellac’ is an INGREDIENT. It’s a NATURAL PRODUCT produced by INSECTS. It is then PROCESSED into food-grade glaze or colorants, OR into wood and furniture polish. They don’t just take wood polish and dump it on your jawbreakers. Grow up.
Bacteriophages: The ‘phages of which you speak are used to kill the listeria virus. Listeria is a bacteria that attacks the immune system and has a one in five mortality rate. Bacteriophages? They’ve been used as an alternative to antibiotic medications in Russia and France for 90 years. That’s really disgusting and dangerous!
Coke: This is total and complete bunk. It would have been far more effective to point out that colas and carbonated drinks have been linked to weakened bones in those who overconsume them, but this is complete lies here. Again.
Salads: I think you mean propylene glycol. And again, this is bullshit. PG only causes reactions in those allergic to it. It has a very low toxicity and can only negatively affect human health if very large amounts are ingested very quickly and over a very short period of time. By which I mean ‘Find a vat of it and start drinking it and nothing else.’ Again you go for the lie instead of pointing out that fast food salads are processed and contain as much fat and cholesterol as most of the other foods offered by a fast food place.
Beef additives: This has nothing to do with fast food. This is common in MOST meats in the US. This is because the US has become so obsessed with the fat content of meat and making it ‘healthy’ that we have literally bred almost all the flavor out of every food animal breed we currently use. Flavorants are almost ALWAYS injected during processing or most of our meat would be bland and tasteless. ‘Flavorants’ typically being concentrated broth and/or salt and seasoning.
Cheese: Lies again. Only those cheeses labelled as ‘Pasteurized process cheese food’ and ‘Pasteurized process cheese spread’ match these stats. Pasteurized process cheese is simply a blended cheese made to have a sharp taste and be easily melted. Your lie here is that the 47% is referring to the cheese’s fat content, not cheese content.
This image is full of lies and misrepresented half-truths and anyone spreading this as truthful should rethink their approach.
TL;DR: just because it’s in a pretty image, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Oh man, I saw the image scrolling down and was like ‘I sure hope there’s someone underneath this saying how bullshit this infographic is’ and there was
^for the last comment.. I thought the same thing
Source: the-more-u-know
Photo reblogged from Art by her with 25,753 notes
8 Words You Should Avoid When WritingAs always, Orwell’s final rule applies: “Break any of these rules before saying anything barbarous.” There are instances where each of these words fills a valuable role. However, especially among inexperienced writers, these words are frequently molested and almost always gum up the works.
1. “Suddenly”
“Sudden” means quickly and without warning, but using the word “suddenly” both slows down the action and warns your reader. Do you know what’s more effective for creating the sense of the sudden? Just saying what happens.
I pay attention to every motion, every movement, my eyes locked on them.Suddenly,The gun goes off.When using “suddenly,” you communicate through the narrator that the action seemed sudden. By jumping directly into the action, you allow the reader to experience that suddenness first hand. “Suddenly” also suffers from being nondescript, failing to communicate the nature of the action itself; providing no sensory experience or concrete fact to hold on to. Just … suddenly.
Feel free to employ “suddenly” in situations where the suddenness is not apparent in the action itself. For example, in “Suddenly, I don’t hate you anymore,” the “suddenly” substantially changes the way we think about the shift in emotional calibration.
2. “Then”
Source: referenceforwriters
Link reblogged from fab fat feminist with 6,077 notes
Quietly Thinking Aloud: Brain teasers for egalitarians/equalists. →
Say I’m 32 years old and you’re 22 years old.
In how many years will we be the same age?
…
Silly question, right? If you define aging as a process that stops at death, the only way we’ll ever be the same age is if I die first. If you don’t, then we’ll never be the same age. Every time you age a year, I also age a year. Since our ages increase at the same rate, you will never catch up to my head start. We have achieved a total equality of aging, but that does not change the permanent inequality of our age.
Okay, say I have a million dollars and you’re completely broke. If we both get a dollar a day, how long will it take you to catch up with me?
Now, this one’s even sillier, because if you have no other resources, your dollar a day is going to be eaten up by basic living expenses that it doesn’t quite meet, and I have an excess of money that can be spent on money-making opportunities that pay off far better than an additional $365 a year. I could literally burn the dollar I’m getting as part of our Totally Equal Income and still make more money in a year than you do just by sticking my money in the bank.
But still: both of us getting a dollar a day is totally equal, right? It means we’re being treated exactly the same.
And now, final problem:
If we have a world that contains structural inequalities, systemic imbalances, disproportionate danger faced by some, and unequal access to resources and opportunities, is “treating everyone the same” really going to result in equality?
Show your work.
Source: alexandraerin
Post reblogged from with 174 notes
About
This is a blog by scientists about the anti-science of healthism.
This blog might be for you if you:
- are aware of or interested in the history of health research, including its many grand claims later found to be utterly false (after having maimed/tortured/killed thousands of people)
- agree that if what we know about health and human biology is the size of a frisbee, half of that frisbee would be under dispute, and what we don’t know about health and human biology would be the size of the planet
- roll your eyes at local news ‘health’ headlines (which tend to contradict themselves week to week)
- think Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil and Dr. Sharma have a lot more wrong with their currently held scientific opinions and presentation thereof than they have right
- believe that shows like The Biggest Loser have nothing at all to do with actual health and positive outcomes of its contestants and viewers
- agree that there is no obesity epidemic
- agree that skepticism, not belief, should be the natural foundation of intellectual and scientific inquiry
- agree that medical researchers and health care professionals are as prone to error and bias as any other human, regardless of how many years they spent getting their degrees
- …or are just plain curious about healthism and why it’s bunkum!
Source: fucknohealthism
Photo reblogged from Bury my Heart at the Dump with 235,986 notes
FOR THOSE NOT IN THE KNOW, NIGHT WITCHES WERE RUSSIAN LADY BOMBERS WHO BOMBED THE SHIT OUT OF GERMAN LINES IN WW2. THING IS THOUGH, THEY HAD THE OLDEST, NOISIEST, CRAPPEST PLANES IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. THE ENGINES USED TO CONK OUT HALFWAY THROUGH THEIR MISSIONS, SO THEY HAD TO CLIMB OUT ON THE WINGS MID FLIGHT TO RESTART THE PROPS. THE PLANES WERE ALSO SO NOISY THAT TO STOP GERMANS FROM HEARING THEM COMBING AND STARTING UP THEIR ANTI AIRCRAFT GUNS, THEY’D CLIMB UP TO A CERTAIN HEIGHT, COAST DOWN TO GERMAN POSITIONS, DROP THEIR BOMBS, RESTART THEIR ENGINES IN MIDAIR, AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF DODGE.
THEIR LEADER FLEW OVER 200 MISSIONS AND WAS NEVER CAPTURED.
Source: sovietico
Photo reblogged from Bury my Heart at the Dump with 13,844 notes
He is so spot on. So many scary things happening lately, it is hard not to feel bombarded. I feel a lot of sadness for the people hurting tonight in Boston.
Source: frangry
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