hey guys, i know there’s a lot of cute animal content out on these here internets, but please, please learn to think critically about these things. People touching/hugging/otherwise interacting with wild animals is a bad idea, and often illegal. Predator and prey species being kept together is a bad idea. Animal behavior and stress signals are not intuitive so you probably can’t tell how an animal is feeling from a picture or video. Just because it looks like it’s “smiling” doesn’t mean that it’s happy, and just because it isn’t struggling doesn’t mean it isn’t stressed.
i don’t want to sound mean, but these things encourage dangerous behavior that can lead to both humans and animals being hurt.
you know what really fucking pisses me off about the whole “GASP ADULTS WRITING ABOUT KIDS” discourse
you know what really fucking pisses me off?
hi. i grew up in the bible belt of the midwest. as a young queer slowly coming to terms with being Super Not Straight, I grew up a town where there was one grocery store and eleven churches. on nice sunny days, before real summer heat set in, the chances of well-dressed smiling proselytizing boys with free copies of their holy books showing up at your door approached 100 percent. in my high school, there were to my knowledge about four queer kids, myself included in that number, and one of them was terrified to come out or even be seen with other boys because he grew up in the kind of household where you would absofuckinglutely be thrown out for being gay.
i did not have a queer childhood. this was just as the proliferation of the internet was starting to become a thing, but your best bet to get on a computer would be to go to the local library. the librarian, btw, was a devout christian and was part of the baptist church across the street. so the idea of using free resources to reach out or research what the fuck it meant to be queer was literally not an option.
i did not get queer literature. i did not get queer media. i subsisted on fandom, because it was the only type of content i knew that talked about being queer, that was positive about it, and was often created by adults who would point you to resources to help. this was before scarleteen and teen vogue and other sites.
fandom was my queer community, because i had zero alternatives. society gave me no alternatives.
and now I am looking at all these fearmongering puritanical moralizing shitheels go on and on about how any adult who writes about younger people is a predatory pedo
I did not get a fucking queer childhood. And if I want to sit down and write or read a story about queer teens who get a better shot, who do find love and feel comfortable experimenting with their sexuality instead of treating it like a potential death sentence,
you do not get to sit there and tell me what a fucking terrible human I am. I was a fucking kid too, and these are my stories too. they, in fact, are the stories fucking owed to me by a world that taught me to be afraid. and that part of my history as a human did not get erased when i passed some arbitrary milestone of time.
Society already stole the upbringing I should have had and locked me in a fucking closet until i was in my mid 20s, and you puritanical myopic shits have the fucking audacity to say me reaching back to try and remember something better makes me a pedophile, you dogwhistling dumbfucks.
you are literally on the same side as the people who made my best friend afraid his dad would beat him to death for coming out. that is where you stand. you use the same tactics and the same scripts. “oh if you are interested in these things…… that means you’re Wrong and will probably go to Hell 😦 why do you want to be such a bad person when you can be Straight And Pure?”
fuck off
I think this is the part that hurts the most: it’s mostly people who did get a queer childhood trying to shut down those of us who didn’t from talking about it.
Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.
A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”
This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:
1. Everyone does not already know.
2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.
Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.
I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.
I get that it can be frustrating to feel like your identity is being reduced to facts and figures for the benefit of red tape. But trust me, the researchers aren’t your enemy here. Most of us are queer too. All of us are just as frustrated by this crap as you are. We are doing our best, and I swear to you this work really is making a difference. Please don’t sabotage it.
Una protesta
Una masacre estudiantil
En las calles de un país.
The fusion feed relata el despertar de los Nicaragüenses y cómo los jóvenes se están levantando contra el gobierno.
#SosNicaragua
Vídeo por @fusiontv via twitter
This is the country that my mother left when she was just a child. What is happening here is real.
Please consider donating to this gofundme, it’s towards medical donations for those who have been harmed by the government and the sandinista youth during the protests.
And please spread word of this, international news feeds have been pretty much kicked out of the country and social media like twitter and facebook is all the people have left to show just what’s happening.
I REALLY fucking hate the stereotype that Canadians are so nice and passive and apologetic about everything. The stereotype is more than just irksome to me; it’s damaging. It disregards the ugly realities of racism throughout the country, particularly towards Aboriginal people.
I have witnessed way too much racism in this country to find the “nice Canadian” stereotype cute. The number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in my city alone is horrifying. The abuse and flat-out hatred is grotesque.
Here in Canada, people are really good at not giving a shit about the well-being of another human being if that person happens to be Aboriginal. Here in Canada, people are so well-armed with their assumptions and stereotypes that they can’t even bother to see Aboriginal people as HUMAN.
So no. Canada is not a magical land where everyone loves each other and says sorry constantly. That stereotype is insulting to every Aboriginal woman who is assaulted, goes missing, and/or is murdered. It’s insulting to the families of those missing and murdered women who seek justice and answers that they will never receive, simply because non-Aboriginal Canadians don’t give a damn.
Hey guys this is really important. Missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is an actual problem, and it’s a huge problem here in Canada
“omg this advertisement is so progressive and so good and it’s doing such great things for representation and the world and—”
it is an advertisement. it is trying to sell you something. it is using your liberal ideologies to sell you more bullshit. it sees you as a marketing demographic. corporations do not fucking care about you brands are not your friend this will not save you.
Hey yall today is April 24th and that means its Armenian Genocide rememberance day as someone who has lived and grown up with the Armenian Community (zankou chicken hello!) its important to remember that a large majority of the Armenian Population in LA came after the Genocide. Its the first Genocide in the 20th century and is widely ignored by the US (on purpose) and the rest of the West. Please take sometime this week and read some of the stories and tell someone you love them this week. Heres some more info
you know what you shouldnt do? constantly tell your child how expensive they are to take care of. because eventually, that child gets scared of asking for money, and doesnt feed themself at school, doesnt go places with their friends that require money, because they dont want to be expensive. it really does get into their minds, that theyre too much money and that they shouldnt do anything.
Bonus: don’t spoil your child out of guilt and then tell them how expensive spoiling them is and how “unappreciative” they are because that will mess them up mentally too.
Site Title 