This Is Great Advice.  Does Anyone Know If It Works For MD-shopping As Well?

This is incredibly frightening.  In addition to the definition of domestic violence, the definitions of stalking (old vs. new) and sexual assault (old vs. new) were changed between December 2017 and April 2018.

The Trump Administration Quietly Changed the Definition of Domestic Violence and We Have No Idea What For

It is too early to assess the full impact of the change.

Without fanfare or even notice, the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women made significant changes to its definition of domestic violence in April. The Obama-era definition was expansive, vetted by experts including the National Center for Victims of Crime and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Trump administration’s definition is substantially more limited and less informed, effectively denying the experiences of victims of abuse by attempting to cast domestic violence as an exclusively criminal concern.

The previous definition included critical components of the phenomenon that experts recognize as domestic abuse—a pattern of deliberate behavior, the dynamics of power and control, and behaviors that encompass physical or sexual violence as well as forms of emotional, economic, or psychological abuse. But in the Trump Justice Department, only harms that constitute a felony or misdemeanor crime may be called domestic violence. So, for example, a woman whose partner isolates her from her family and friends, monitors her every move, belittles and berates her, or denies her access to money to support herself and her children is not a victim of domestic violence in the eyes of Trump’s Department of Justice. This makes no sense for an office charged with funding and implementing solutions to the problem of domestic violence rather than merely prosecuting individual abusers

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It breaks my heart that this is necessary.

If you publicly and unreservedly condemn the actions of Nazis in Charlottesville and elsewhere, including everything from quiet hate speech to vehicular terrorism, can you please reblog this post.

I think a few friends, a few followers, every Jew who happens across this post and my own heart could do with knowing that there are more of you out there than there are of them

Sometimes, it’s useful to say, “I’m queer,” instead of getting into the full list of all the ways I don’t fit the supposed defaults for gender, sexuality, relationships, etc.

you are allowed to identify as queer. you don’t need to be ashamed of being queer.

There aren’t many things that have more pride than a peacock.

Pride flag peacocks! 

These are all available on my new redbubble!

Wow.  Just ... wow.

I’ll have to remember this!

SMALL TALK TIP FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE SMALL TALK: Ask people if they have any pets. This is light and impersonal enough to offend no one. People who have pets are usually pretty excited to talk about them and show off pictures, so there’s a good chance that you will be looking at kitties and doggos. People who don’t have pets will usually talk about the pets they wish they had, or have had in the past. People who neither have nor want pets are pretty rare.

They’re so cute!

funky lil pride kitties!

planning on making them into holographic stickers ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Thank you to everyone who voted!  Even if the race wasn’t as close in your area, your vote made a difference.

Here is a neat thing to think of forever: look at “maximum room occupancy” signs — they are everywhere in offices and hotels and restaurants and shops.

If you see one at or around 63, take a good, long look at how physically small the room is!

May this haunt you forever should you think “my vote doesn’t matter. Even though I can vote, I won’t.”

Via

This is totally a feature!  We should exploit the coat hangers out of it.  

Does anyone know if it works the same for different flavors of English?  If a group of people from the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia are all absolutely coat hangered, are they all in the same condition, or are some of them drunk, some of them shocked, and some of them just confused?

you can make nearly any object into a good insult if you put ‘you absolute’ in front of it

example: you absolute coat hanger

Believe the beautiful snow leopard!

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