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flawedrenaissance:

numol:

flawedrenaissance:

alliterate:

Holy Jesus, there are so fucking many things wrong with that quote. Grotesque? Revolting? “Real” women? Are you fucking kidding me? BODY POLICING IS NOT OKAY, NO MATTER WHO IS DOING THE POLICING OR WHOSE BODY IS BEING POLICED.

I’m gonna catch hell for saying this, because I’m a cis guy, but the hell with it.

The guy can have a thought. Granted, he’s wrong, but it does no good to tell him he’s an asshole for being wrong. He can just be wrong, and we can correct him respectfully. It’s called civil discourse, and it’s pretty much the only way any compromise can be made.

Again, I’m not excusing the comment, but just responding with anger fueled comments simply adds to the dynamic. Try disagreeing with respect, list the ways that the quote is wrong, and go from there.

It’s a simple request. One that will likely go unheeded because I’m a cis man and apparently an apologist. I thought I might try anyway though.

With love,

Searose

I knew I was missing something today — I hadn’t had my daily dose of patronizing mansplaining!  Thanks so much for providing it!  And thanks for doing it in the most whiny way possible, that’s just delicious.

Also: “With love” lol.

Welp, can’t say that I didn’t know it was coming.

Well look, you’re right. You have every right to be mad, and if you feel patronized than good, because I’m trying to say that you’re right.

I guess that being a cis male immediately disqualified me from having a valid opinion. Since it does, I guess I’ll go slink back into my world of drinking beer, football games, and being an asshole.

Call me whiny if you want, but I was trying to make a simple request. A valid point in this climate. Something that we can at least change on a smaller scale. I’m not trying to invalidate you being mad over something like this. That would be wrong and a pretty apparent abuse of privilege on my part. I’m just trying to say that there is a better way to go about something than just constant namecalling and confrontation. Sticking to those two guns makes an left-wing activist (of any sort) no better than the people that we oppose and the culture that we’re fighting against.

I can’t change the fact that I’m a cis male, but I have a right to see something wrong and write about it just as much as you do.

Being a cis male does not, I think, make it impossible for you to have a valid opinion about this.  But criticizing people for objecting to misogynist garbage because they object too loudly/rudely?  Come on, that’s tone-argument bullshit.

And don’t act like us getting angry about some nasty crap some famous dude said is in any way comparable to Sarah Palin’s or Glenn Beck’s hateful violence-inspiring asshattery.  If anyone’s actually making threats, that’s not cool, but I haven’t seen that happening here.

(Source: vermeers, via mytaylorrose)

{ honour killings in india. }

reblogging for commentary by thesadnessofpencils and aqrima.

*WARNING* for talk of physical violence and systemic violence, and for racism/colonialism and whitesplaining


aqrima:

grieving:

thesadnessofpencils:

feistyfeminist:

aqrima: [i deleted the original post because i don’t like to have copies of things on my blog, but since it’s reproduced here, it should be fine..?]

feistyfeminist:

grieving:

honour killings in india

I, personally, do not feel that culture is an excuse for violence. In fact, I feel that there is no excuse for violence. Using religion and culture to excuse murder is an act of cowardice. Yet, still they continue…in the name of religion and tradition, etc.

What I find disgusting about this story—beyond the whole pointless death and human intolerance—is that the family changed their story multiple times. Changing your story in such a fashion over and over again is rather indicative of guilt. And an autopsy showing that the young woman suffocated…that, too, seems more like murder than suicide. Were there marks on the neck indicating that she had been hung? Was there rope? Did the rope have any of her DNA embedded in the threads from, you know, hair and skin that would have certainly been torn and irritated? Is there even any evidence that she hung herself, aside from the family’s changing stories?

And isn’t it suspicious that her “suicide” note suddenly appeared after they changed the story?

No, you cannot change society in one day. Ms. Pathak’s brother was right in that. But that doesn’t mean that culture cannot change at all. It can, and it will. Hopefully, one day, the outdated, ignorant, and conservative notion of honor killings will be gone and women will be one step closer to being safe and equal in the cultures that once advocated such archaic systems.

okay, so. this is brutal and horrific, and this is not okay.

but. but but but but but.

you’re saying that this is done in the name of (outdated, archaic, conservative, ignorant) culture, and that is wrong. and some people say that this is what the culture says, and it is outdated, archaic, conservative and ignorant.

you’re working on the assumption that 1) there is some primal indian culture that we (indians, south asians) come from, and 2) that you know what it is.

and you don’t. you really, really don’t. i get the sense you (and the person you reblogged) are just a white feminist who thinks it’s okay to make blatantly racist and imperialist statements about our cultures, while you’re completely ignorant about the ways in which, for one, imperialism has shaped our cultures. made it so that we are in this bind where it’s either fundamentalism or modernity, and nothing. fucking. makes. sense. 

and i’m sorry (actually, i’m not), but this makes me so angry. i don’t like how your interpretations of casteism and the way it comes from our “culture” and blah blah fucking blah…. just recolonize us all over again.

do some fucking research before you make statements like this. seriously. learn some fucking shit.

i can’t even properly comment on this, it just makes me so angry. i’m so tired of my cultures being completely stripped of their complexity and the brutal violence of imperialism that has robbed us of our realities. i am not excusing murder. i’m just saying, don’t say it’s because of our archaic, ignorant, outdated, conservative culture. you have no idea what our “culture” is. there is no single “culture” monolith. so shut the fuck up.

First, I reblogged without comment, so it’d be hard for me to “shut the fuck up” when I hadn’t said anything. Maybe you don’t understand how tumblr works? Its an interesting article and I wasn’t going to delete the comment/credit from the person who brought it to my attention by originally posting it.

Second, reading comprehension is indeed free, and a gift for all who read what you thoughtlessly type. While I can not speak for Grieving, I can read her comment and see that she didn’t even try to judge the entirety of any culture, whether it be Indian, South Asian, Hindu, Jain, Caucasian, Dravidian, etc. The author of this tumblr seemed to spend most of the time focusing on the specifics of the case (DNA, changing stories) and commented on the the victim’s brother saying that you couldn’t “change society in a day” and the victim’s father saying “This is part and parcel of our culture, that you marry into your own caste. Every society has its own culture. Every society has its own traditions.” She then called the notion of honor killings “outdated, ignorant, and conservative.”

But since you wanted to put words in my mouth, I’ll respond. You just excused horrible violence because you feel, wait, I don’t know what you feel because you just flung around baseless insults and couldn’t explain yourself because you were just “so angry.” Here are some facts from the article - since I’m assuming you just reacted without actually taking the time read it, I’ll list them for you:

  • There’s been such a resurgence in honor killings in India that the Prime Minister had to order a “cabinet-level commission to consider tougher penalties in honor killings.”
  • There are village caste councils, or khap panchayats, that are operating as an extralegal morals police force. Courts are trying to curb these councils but politician are afraid to because it will cause them to lose votes. (these councils, along with honor killings are more prevalent in the Northern states.)
  • Here’s the quote for the slain couple’s uncle and suspect in the murder: “What is wrong in it? Murder is wrong, but this is socially the best thing that has been done.”
  • The UN stated that in a 2006 survey 76% of respondents said intercaste marriages were unacceptable.

If you had read the article you would have seen where the author of the comment was coming from. Maybe you should be the one who “learns some fucking shit.” You don’t think this accurately portrays the Indian culture? Take it up with the NYT or coherently explain your point of view here. As it stands, your opinion wasn’t worth reading. Oh, and back to my above point, excusing horrible violence on an innocent victim (a whole line of “but, but, but,” really?) makes you an evil person.

First of all, fiestyfeminist, you have the luxury of not being offended because you are a member of the dominant culture. But when you use this luxury to dismiss a person who is offended by it, that’s your privilege showing through. Kindly check it.

Second of all, neither aqrima nor I are advocating violence in the original article. We are instead pointing out that you attribute the source of this violence to our heritage, the same heritage that has been wrecked by imperialism. The author of the NYT article paints the entirety of South Asia with the brush that says: hey look, a bunch of people are doing honour killings! omg! Look at the backward patriarchy! Nyah nyah nyah nyah!

That you are agreeing to such an opinion is what we are calling your attention to. When you say minority cultures are backwards and archaic, without examining the impact your culture has had on ours, or critically examining the patriarchy that defines your own, be prepared for people such as aqrima or I to call you out on your privilege.

Peace out.

I feel as if I need to add some points of clarification here…if only for my own sanity.

Violence is a form of control and power. It is used to subjugate both women and minorities…and no culture is free of that. All forms of violence are demeaning, ignorant, archaic, etc. In short, those adjectives I used to describe honor killings apply to all forms of violence against women and minorities. That includes domestic violence against women in Western cultures, and the endless amounts of women who are killed every single year by their abusive spouses.

However, this article was not about domestic violence. This article was about honor killings. I stand by the fact that honor killings are fundamentally wrong…just as I stand by the notion that rape, domestic violence, and all other violence against women in each and every single culture is wrong.

Violence, such as honor killings, is often excused as part of “culture.” There are huge debates concerning these topics. For example, should we allow something violent described as “culture” to continue because the word “culture” is employed? Or should we work off the basic assumption of human rights? There is no right or wrong answer to this debate. In my original opinion, I was merely pointing out the fact that culture is used as an excuse when it comes to Ms. Pathak’s death. Take, for example, the uncle’s quote about murder being wrong “but [that] this is socially the best thing that has been done” (ref. the death of Ms. Pathak).

In a nutshell, had this article been about any type of violence against women…I would have commented. Depending on the details of the death, I would have responded in a similar manner by pointing out the very suspicious details of her death and the changing stories of the family members. And, honestly, I don’t see how pointing out that violence against women, the prevalent excuse of “culture,” and the suspicious circumstances surrounding Ms. Pathak’s death is in any way “colonizing,” “imperialistic,” or an example of “white privilege.” Honestly…it’s disgust that anyone would be treated in such a demeaning and cruel manner.

i am going to try to respond to this. i was not planning to, originally, hence the delay, but i’m going to. i don’t think i should have to. it is not my job to prove to privileged people how fucked up they’re being, to try to get them to check their privilege. so it is not, and should not be, my job to prove to you, feistyfeminist and grieving, what exactly is going wrong here. but i’m doing it anyway. and i am pissed off about that. that i feel like i have to prove it to you anyway. because you guys are the ones with the power here, the power to “inform”. the power of the new york times backing you up. the power of assumption, of default. your words are the truth, aren’t they? i don’t like having to prove things to you. but i have to. so:

first, thank you again to thesadnessofpencils for articulating things so well in your response to feistyfeminist. i really really appreciated it, and you pinpointed things very very well.

so, feistyfeminist:

i’m not an expert on how tumblr works, but yeah, i’d gleaned a fair amount of the reblogging system and credit, etc. i am not as familiar with responding and re-responding through comments, but i’m getting there. but yes, i knew that you had reblogged grieving, and i am sorry that i messed up the credit to hir while reblogging.

the thing is, though, you didn’t have to say anything. just like people who read that article and agree with it, and circulate it around to boost signals about oppression against women (without recognizing how racist and imperialist that article was, without recognizing how intersections of gender, caste, racial and cultural violence need to be talked about in any such discussion) …. well, all of you don’t have to say anything. you are endorsing those oversimplistic, racist, ethnicist, imperialist and patronizing views of other cultures by refusing to learn about and acknowledge the whole thing. you are, as thesadnessofpencils so astutely described, saying “nyah nyah nyah nyah! look at the backward patriarchy in that culture; at least we’re not doing that!” defend yourself all you like. the point stands: when you refuse to actually look at all the complex forces at play, you are denying a whole people, a whole culture, a whole “nation” (with all the imperialist, forced connotations of what a nation-state really is, with how a nation-state has never been default for us) our legitimacy, our validity, our history, our politics, our cultureS.

so yes, i read that article. i’d also read about this particular case of honor killings before. to be precise, i skimmed through this nyt article. your assumptions about my lack of knowledge about that are very telling. this is something that i have (painfully, slowly) realized i knew nothing about, something that i have had to realize was portrayed through the elitist media (upper middle and upper class, upper caste hindu) apologia (to a western audience, because the thing is, you’re still brown, you’re still indian, you’re still not white, as much as the fundamentalist hindutva crowd might want to trace their ancestry back to some kind of white, aryan race…. you still have to apologize to the west, who have colonized and re-colonized us, you still have to be “liberal” like them, because “liberal” is the way to go, didn’t you know?)

i grew up in india, mostly northern india, among a diverse array of people, and a whole lot more diverse array of people i was privileged not to interact with, not to care about. and so the news i heard was a mixture of liberal and leftist indian academia and apologia, and protests and realities from grassroots social justice organizers (many of whom came from much less privileged backgrounds, and many of whom did not have the upward mobility that my family did). my father is a member of both of these crowds, if they can be generalized at all as such (which they really can’t, but, well). my mother is a white american, with all the complex and painful realities of what that, my parents’ union and my positionality and biracial identity, means. why am i telling you this? because i think it’s important. i shouldn’t have to prove these things to you, but i do, so i am telling you these things about my background, about the complex politics of my background, in the hope that you might realize that… actually, there is no default neutral of “knowing” or “not knowing” about honor killings in india. you tell me statistics, and they burn in my face.

a few years ago, i would have agreed with you. i would have been shocked and upset about this, and i would have been very angry about patriarchy and casteism in india. and i still am. i am much more upset about it than you know. you tell me i’m an evil person, that i’m excusing violence with complexity, and i’m writing this here to tell you that actually, the complexity only makes the violence sharper, more real. the complexity cannot erode the violence. it is the explanation, but it cannot be the excuse (credit to richard siken’s poem, snow and dirty rain, for that phrase). it cannot be the excuse, because i, we, live with this history. because i live with the knowledge that i grasped onto white amerika instead of paying attention to my history. because the violence of priding the west over a postcolonial state that the west carries the legacy of colonizing, and continues to colonize… because that violence is real. because the violence of what happened to nirupama pathak, and her fiance who remains unnamed throughout that article (because upper caste people are the only ones to talk to, didn’t you know? they’re nice and liberal, they talk about “old india”s and “new india”s and nice linear history “we shouldn’t be like this in the 21st century [we have to be more like you white western people, you’ve got it all right, yes yes we realize that now, sorry sorry]”) … because that violence is horrific. because she should not have died. because imagine what her fiance is living through now, with the knowledge that he is so wrong, so untouchable, that his lover deserved to be killed rather than marry him.

because i don’t like any entire marginalized culture, mine or anyone else’s, being completely written off. “archaic”. “conservative”. how do you know what is archaic and conservative? how do you know the history of caste violence? how do you know that history is linear and chronological, period? how do you know what changed with colonialism and what didn’t? how do you know about the oppression in pre-colonial times and the oppression in colonial times and the oppression in post-colonial times? how? how do you so easily take the apologia of upper-caste middle class privileged folks in india as the right thing, oh yes, at least they’re admitting that culture can be changed, at least they should try, blah blah blah blah. Because it makes you happy to hear that. It makes you happy to be told, over and over, affirmed, that your way is the right way. That you’ve got it all right. That you understand cultureS, so much so that you can make it one great culture monolith.

it’s very wonderfully ironic that you say “take it up with the NYT or coherently explain your point of view here”. wonderful use of the tone argument, i must say. (this is a more direct summary). also, you establish my point exactly. the point is, the new york times represents white amerika (mostly). so what you are telling me is that i, a south asian person, should have to tell the new york times to stop being racist and imperialist, because otherwise the new york times has the perfect right to do so. thank you for putting the onus on me, as a marginalized person.

also, this? “reading comprehension is indeed free”
actually, no, it’s not. it isn’t free for the illiterate, for those who see or process things differently (and are thereby constantly dealing with ableism), for those who don’t have the access (financial or otherwise) to literate education, etc etc etc etc. it also isn’t free for those who don’t know english, since you are talking about the reading comprehension of english-knowing people here.

and by the way, your limited understanding of indian cultures (“Indian, South Asian, Hindu, Jain, Caucasian, Dravidian, etc”) really conflates religion with race and ethnicity and geographic location and nationality and probably other things too, and, again, is extremely limited. And no, the “etc” doesn’t cut it. What you did choose to put before the “etc,” based on your limited understanding which you defend rather a lot, is very interesting and ironic.

grieving:

of course violence is wrong. of course rape is wrong. of course murder is wrong. you point out that “culture” is used as an excuse, but you don’t understand why it is used as an excuse. (it’s because we’re struggling, we need to prove to you that we’re trying to change fast enough, that we’re becoming like you fast enough, a nice superpower, so you don’t come drop your bombs on us, so you don’t come in and set up camp again). you don’t understand how the “culture as monolith” argument works. you don’t understand the painful history of it. the cultures that it denies. i am not excusing casteism. which is why i would think twice, now, now that i am realizing my privilege, finally, finally (and i am ashamed), before sapping up what upper-caste people have to say about it, whether they’re supporting it or not. i’ve heard far too many people, you see, say that “oh yes we don’t agree with casteism, that’s really bad…. but we have separate dishes for our servants,” and “reservations, oh my god, you mean we’ll actually have to have our privilege wrenched away from us just a tiny bit?! omg no, no, we must protest this reservations business immediately!” because the “debates” you just casually insert in — because they are the point. because you act like there is a basic notion of human rights that doesn’t oppress people. because you subscribe to the same old tired liberal, individualist, democratic bullshit.

and the thing is? violence is systemic. address the systemic issues, and maybe we have a fighting chance at making things better.

{ Oppressive statements are bullying, harsh, unhealthy and harmful, regardless of how polite you sound to yourself. }

tal9000:

genderbitch:

No seriously. I really think a ton of privileged people don’t grasp this. When you say something to me that is cissexist, even if you try to be polite and even affectionate in saying it, it hurts me. Directly. It hurts me, it intimidates me, it attacks me. Yeah sure you don’t intend to bully me when you do that, but the fact is you are.

So stop being so surprised when I react really angrily or insult you or get harsh. Because I am simply responding in turn to your oppressive, bullying actions. And expecting me to respond nicely to your attacks on me just because you are externally polite or don’t believe your attacks are actually attacks (i.e. you don’t believe how much of a bully you’re being) is just bullying apologism.

So the irony of privileged folks accusing me of bullying, when I don’t even get all that rough with the externally polite oppressive assholes and generally just the snide oppressive assholes or privilege deniers is… it’s just boggling. Fighting back against bullying isn’t bullying.

It’s self defense.

Have I reblogged this yet? Yes? Have I reblogged this enough yet? No? Reblogging again.

{ “good faith” and TW for rape apologism }

tal9000:

jaded16india:

thesadnessofpencils:

Usually I don’t bother. I really don’t. I can’t be wasting spoons on shit like “Tone arguments are terrible! Here’s why I can still use them instead of you!”

Then this entire question of good faith/bad faith comes up. 

Let me tell you something about “good faith”, my duckies. 

 if I didn’t check myself properly & screw up, the person I hurt has every right to hold that against me for the rest of my life. You know why? Because my feelings don’t matter. Not one iota. Theirs do. The conversation is about them, & their needs. & while the onus is on me to apologise, they do not have an obligation to accept the apology. If I come over and smash your house up, and then knock asking to be let in, would you open the door? Do I even have any right to demand you do that after behaving in such a heinous manner?

Of course not.

To break someone’s house and then assume you will be let in and complain when you don’t is an abuse of privilege. To demand an assumption of good faith, that is abuse of privilege. To erase someone and then tell them to get over it, that is abuse of privilege. & making it about my feelings on the subject is an abuse of privilege. & above all, it is legitimate critique, because the onus is on ME to check & double-check my bowling technique (cricket metaphor, what to do) to make sure I don’t injure anyone. As I said to thenakedsamba yesterday, a marginalised person does not derive some grotesque pleasure from being angry. From not forgetting. Because we can’t handwave all that oppression away. 

& we have every right to slam the door in your face & tell you to bugger off.

P.S. Why is it that all calls for ~solidarity~ within the social justice movement come from the top? 

Have to agree, this post squicked me so much out with calls of solidarity. We are veryvery clear what kind of solidarity this is, let Global Sistersong Wash You And Your Pesky Past Hurt Away. We are all a big feminist community, we need to *support* each other.

Yes we do. But we also need to not have anxiety attacks and have our voices erased. I was reminded of a terrible metaphor used by rape apologists while I read this post — I don’t even know why! — and all I could think of was, in *that* space would anyone ever ask to “forgive”? I’m not even going to try and trivialise sexual assault by equating it with these unsafe ‘popular’ feminist spaces but personally speaking, many tymes when I have my PTSD episode — panic attacks looking at posts and/or comments at these sites to be specific — I can’t distinguish it from the time I get triggered around rape apology discussions. Speaking in terms of headspace alone, these two arguments seem too fucking similar to me. 

This (especially the bold part (bolded where I got it from)). If you hurt me and fauxpologize, I’m going to be on guard because I have no reason to believe that you’re not going to do it again. And I’ll be on guard for it forever if I have to be.

Also, damnit, I liked Tiger Beatdown. Why did she have to go after my old wounds?

“also, sometimes we’re rude and blunt because we keep getting ignored and our spaces disrespected. if you touch me ten times and i tell you, ten times, not to touch me, i’m going to scream the eleventh. i’m not being rude. i’m enforcing my space because you didn’t listen.”

Nancy (loverightangle)

(Source: fyeahautismspectrum, via jemimaaslana)

{ Fun Fact # 4 }

theskinofourteeth:

Since April is “autism awareness month”, I am going to be extra bitchy for a while. So I’ve decided to start collecting all the “fun facts” about autism I will encounter this month, and correct them.

Fun Fact # 4

If a nonautistic individual states that autistic people need to be cured or prevented, that autism is an epidemic, or that it’s getting “worse”, they are stating their opinions, as is their right. Eugenics and genocide are equivalent to mild preferences regarding pizza toppings, etc. If an autistic should object to this line of thought, they must learn to “take another’s perspective”, “put yourself in their shoes (which we know must be very hard for you)”, and, above all, “agree to disagree”.

Actual Fact # 4

You don’t get to have an opinion about whether or not someone should exist.

Your “agreement” is not a prerequisite blessing upon my neurotype. It never even enters the occassion.

I do not need to be nice to people who think I shouldn’t exist.

(via fyeahautismspectrum)

{ NEUROTPYICAL PEOPLE (READ: PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AUTISTIC)- I CARE NEITHER ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OR OFFENSE. }

anarchoautie:

savethelifeboat:

you don’t care when you make meanspirited jokes.

you don’t care when saying bigoted things and then passing them off as sarcasm.

you don’t care when you tell me to stop stimming, it’s weird.

you don’t care when you tell me ‘look people in the eye- it’s rude.’

you don’t care when you campaign for a cure for autism - yet don’t care about erasing stigma against autistic people.

since when have you cared?

so when i call you out, or simply tell you something like ‘hey, that was really ableist’, the correct response is not how mad or offended you are, or how i hurt your feelings.

you may have heard in the news that autistic people do not have empathy.

well, this is kind of bullshit. we express it in ways that are not always socially acceptable to NT people, but we have empathy.

here, right now, though?

don’t pull that card. i do NOT need to be nice to you.

you have never been even slightly nice to us. forget about nice.

forget about your feelings when i angrily call you out if our existence doesn’t mean much to you.

Oh this is too great to not reblog.

(via jemimaaslana)

{ if the callouts make you more annoyed than the ableism check your privilege. }

ron-pert:

gyllenbeard:

ron-pert:

gyllenbeard:

obentomusubi:

ron-pert:

obentomusubi:

weexist-weresist:

ron-pert:

Maybe iif I wasn’t the only one calling out people like tangledupinlace, mehreenkasana, and ian? Maybe if it didn’t make me look like the silly person in the corner because no one else speaks up. Yes, I know, not everyone can. But…like…no one? Seriously?

this will be deleted shortly but actually call outs generally annoy me more than most instances of someone exercising oppression. not sure about tangleddupinlace and mehreenkasana but i feel like ian’s comments were taken out of context. however given the context of interpreting things through an allistic state of mind vs an autistic one, i dont think either party is to blame excessively. i feel like callouts generally are not constructive unless they aim to enlighten. especially in this situation, it seems like the situation has been full of mutual misunderstandings. 

Bolded emphasis mine.

right. I missed the part where I was obligated to be nice for a privileged person’s benefit.

You’re not obligated to do anything. Nobody said you had to be nice while calling anyone out.

I can only speak for myself when I say that when I call people out I try to be nice because more often than not, being nice convinces people a lot more than yelling at them, and I’ve generally found that people learn from experiences better if they’re told in a respectful manner.

So I have my approach of calling people out and you have yours. No approach is better or worse than the other. They’re just two different approaches, and that’s totally valid.

This. I find that if someone comes at it from a “you’re wrong and this is why you’re wrong” perspective, I tend to push them away because I think it’s rude. But I’m willing to change and I think that constructive criticism and pointers on how to change are extremely effective. 

I’m not saying that you should kiss up to people but a little kindness and compassion goes a long way. Just because a person is being offensive, doesn’t mean you should attack them for it. They might not even know they’re being offensive.

lolwhat? I’m obligated to be kind to people after they kick me in the face? No. Basic human decency. I don’t exist to educate people on it. And I don’t care if they don’t know. I am a human being! Should be kinda fucking blatantly obvious.

You’re not obligated to be anything. But when has being mean to anybody ever gotten you anywhere, regardless of the kind of person they are? Two wrongs don’t make a right. 

And if you don’t educate people on it, how the heck are they supposed to know the difference between right and wrong? What’s stopping them from wronging another person in the same way they wronged you. You’re absolutely right! You’re human and you don’t exist to educate, you exist for yourself. And no one’s suggesting you be otherwise. But if somebody doesn’t offer some sort of suggestion as to how a that person can change, you can’t complain when they do the same offensive thing again and again and again. It’s just a lack of education.

Like a child eating dirt. They don’t know it’s wrong until someone says “Hey, that’s not good for you. There are germs in that and you can get really sick.” and then they understand that it’s not good and they eventually stop or work to stop.

And please don’t swear at me. I haven’t done anything to wrong you and it’s rude. 

people can use google. And they should. It should really not be some enlightenment issue that autistic people are* gasp* humans too. I am infuriated at the idea that it is my responsibility to educate you and others about this. So infuriating I might swear at you and no, I don’t care if it’s rude.

^ this.

EDIT: actually, i’m ok with obentomusubi’s second reblog (“you have your approach and i have mine”), and AFAIK ron-pert is ok with that also [relevant link].

EDIT 2: i really don’t trust my judgment enough to have an opinion about the thing with Nancy and Ian (it’s an anxiety thing, i can’t trust my judgment about a lot of things anymore, and i’m sorry that makes me useless here [EDIT 3: and i’m not even sure if it’s my place to have an opinion in the first place]), but i still don’t like the tone argument stuff in some of the responses here.

EDIT 4: sorry, i should’ve said that i DID have an opinion on this but i can’t have one anymore.  i know i’ve been terrible about being accountable for shit lately and i’m sorry for that also.

(via gottagetbacktohogwarrrtss-deact)

{ LINK: An experiment in asking politely for accessibility. }

droppingthefbomb:

harvestxvx:

melissikins:

The argument that if (marginalized group of people) would just (!) ASK (nicely, in just the right way using exactly the perfect tone and obeying all the unwritten secret rules) for (their human rights), they would be given immediately them by the innocent benevolent rulers who just didn’t know what they needed is so common that it should be in Derailing for Dummies

Here’s what happened when one lawyer with low vision and superhuman patience decided to test that theory.

READ THE SHIT OUT OF THIS. 

This little mini-experiment is fabulous and details exactly how little awareness there is of accessibility in day-to-day life. This is the social model of disability, y’all. And I can’t stop thinking about how massively fucked up it is that society demands for people with disabilities to either 1) just be so good at not having access to things or 2) use time and energy and resources they don’t have demanding things that should be basic. This is indecent.

EVERYONE READ THIS, PLEASE.

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

(Source: obsessionfull, via droppingthefbomb-deactivated201)

{ LINK: putain laisse-moi tout seul: flymetothemooon: soydulcedeleche: i keep seeing vegan arguments fly by... }

soydulcedeleche:

madamethursday:

cherry-jelly:

flymetothemooon:

soydulcedeleche:

i keep seeing vegan arguments fly by my dash.

one thing i noticed…alot of vegan people will acknowledge economic privilege…lack of access to shit….but often times in the same sentence they will go into “but if you have access to it, and you know about…

i totally agree, but the improper grammar and vulgar language weaken the whole point.

Wow, blatant tone argument. I’d say I haven’t seen that in a while, but I see it daily. 

Just wanted to comment to say: HELL FUCKING NO. The point is valid no matter how you say it, no matter what vulgarity is in there. 

Logically speaking, the tone argument is invalid on its face. Saying the sky is blue in the “wrong” manner does not diminish the truth of the fact that THE SKY IS A GODDAMN MARVELOUS FUCKING BIG-ASS SHADE OF BLUE. 

You can say that with as much vulgarity and bad grammar as you want. The sky remains blue. Telling me that my argument that the sky is blue is weakened by my rill bad spellin and gramur just proves that you’re not getting it and you’re more interesting in policing than participating and listening. 

LOL i just had to laugh at that. i am not writing my motherfuckin dissertation on here so i will be cussin and using hood slang and fucked up grammar…on purpose!

let me go continue happily “nulling and voiding” everything i post haha

reblogging for soydulcedeleche’s first post and all comments except for cherry-jelly’s.

(Source: bad-dominicana, via bad-dominicana)