GOP: We Must Follow The Constitution THE THE LETTER ALL THE TIME NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE THE FOUNDING

What were your poems about? You’ve gotten me curious.

My English teacher apologetically told me my poems were to controversial to tell in class (we’re in the poetry unit right now) and I can’t tell if I should be proud, concerned, or miffed.

I have read both Order of the Stick and As the Crow Flies and they are fantastic.

Webcomics w/ Black Leads

I was wondering how many webcomics there were out there with black protagonists (for my own reference). Then I figured plenty of other folks would love to see a list. So heeeeere we go! (Please reblog and add more!) 

AGENTS OF THE REALM by Mildred Louis

NIBI by Gyimah Gariba

DEMON STREET by Aliza Layne

VIBE by Dan Ciurczak

BALDERDASH by Victoria Goog

STAR TRIP by Gisele Jobateh

SCHOOL SPIRIT (FRESH ROMANCE) by Kate Leth & Arielle Jovellanos

ALL OUR CUTS AND BRUISES by My Sjögren Blücher

STEVE’S STORY (KHAOS KOMICS) by Tab Kimpton

DEMON HUNTER KAIN by Burrell Gill Jr.

SAFE HAVENS by Bill Holbrook

THE SUBSTITUTES by Myisha Haynes

VALOROUS TALES by Dashawn Mahone

M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder

THE IMMORTAL NADIA GREENE by Jamal Campbell

PRINCESS LOVE PON by Shauna J. Grant

AS THE CROW FLIES by Melanie Gillman

@allyfallsdownstairs @themoriarkitty

Amandla Stenberg Opens Up About Her Gender Identity

The 17-year-old, Hunger Games actor Amandla Stenberg has come out as non-binary. Stenberg - who plays Rue in the adventure film franchise – says she feels like she’s not a ‘woman’ all the time, and non-binary is a term that she feels comfortable using to describe herself. (She is using female pronouns).

“The 17-year-old, Hunger Games actor Amandla Stenberg has come out as non-binary.

Stenberg – who plays Rue in the adventure film franchise – says she feels like she’s not a ‘woman’ all the time, and non-binary is a term that she feels comfortable using to describe herself. (She is using female pronouns).

Writing on Tumblr, she said she is organizing a workshop on feminism, specifically how ‘mainstream feminist movements have continuously excluded women who are not white, thin, cisgender, able-bodied and neurotypical’.

Something we are struggling with is understanding the intersection of feminism and gender identity…

We’re both people who don’t feel like “women” all the time – but we claim feminism as our movement.

Basically, we’re trying to understand the duality of being a non-binary person and a feminist. How do you claim a movement for women when you don’t always feel like one?”

Read the full piece here: 

#1: THANK YOU AMANDLA FOR YOUR CONSISTENT AWESOMENESS AS AN INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST AND ROLE MODEL FOR YOUTH & EVERYONE ELSE!

#2: YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A WOMEN OR CIS TO BE FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Just like white people can and should advocate for racial equality, everyone can and should advocate for gender equality. 

I give Amandla a TON of credit for having to not only grow up in public, but grow up as a non-binary POC in a white / sexist / cisnormative society! She is young and figuring herself and society out.  I’m Team Stenberg and am not looking to call her out, I just wanted to make this crucial clarification. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, We Should All Be Feminists

If someone is an adjunct professor, it’s even worse (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/11/adjunct-faculty_n_4255139.html). According to that article, the average salary for an adjunct is between $20,000 and $25,000. I think the untenured column on this graph is higher than that because it’s including tenure-track positions.

“

This is for real. Image by Piled Higher and Deeper.

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 respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”

The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement

me playing pokemon: why do all of these npc trainers have so many of the same pokemon, and only like teams of 2-3? this is unrealistic they should have full 6 pokemon teams and cover all their type weaknesses and

me playing pokemon go, arms full of nidoran,: I now understand

So here’s the thing. Yes, there are some strong female characters in video games. But the existence of a few is not the same thing as full representation. To quote a study of video game magazines (yes, I know that the magazines are not the same as the games themselves, but this is what I’ve found so far)(x), “The ratio of male (360) to female (119) video game characters was about 3 to 1.” . In addition, “ A content analysis of images of video game characters from top-selling American gaming magazines showed male characters (83%) are more likely than female characters (62%) to be portrayed as aggressive. Female characters are more likely than male characters to be portrayed as sexualized (60% versus 1%), scantily clad (39% versus 8%) and as showing a mix of sex and aggression (39 versus 1%).” In addition, another study (x) suggested that playing as a sexualized video game character meant that “ Female self-efficacy was negatively affected.”

Female Characters in Videogames... debunking a myth

It's time to brush aside the oft regurgitated myth that strong female leads in videogames are and have always been nonexistent or relegated to background or ...

Damn… regardless of where we fall in this debate, this is some damn good work. I am thoroughly impressed.

This sounds like a joke but I’m pretty sure this is how 80% of Little Cup teams are created.

(Little Cup is a format on one of the main online Pokèmon simulators where you can only use unevolved Pokèmon that are capable of evolving, making it very optimized for cute swoosh swoosh Pokèmon.)

me: “that Pokemon looks cool” Some buttman: “sure, but it’s attack stat is shit and not to mention it’s ability makes it worthless. It’s move pool is so shallow, it can’t even learn good tms. Not to mention that it’s 4x weak to fire.” Me: “he go swoosh swoosh and its cute”