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I feel like whenever women complain about men, they speak about things that men have done to them.

However when men complain about women, they speak about things that women HAVEN’T done FOR them.

I think that’s an important distinction.

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NY: TURN YOUR BALLOT OVER

NY State residents, please be aware that on Election Day (11/7), the BACK of the ballot will have a referendum to vote on convening a NY Constitutional Convention. Placing it on the back of the ballot was a DELIBERATE move.

If it passes, it could be a disaster for ALL CURRENT AND FORMER NY State (including state, city, county, town, village and school district) public employees (police officers, firefighters, corrections officers, teachers, sanitation workers, teaching aides, librarians, bus drivers, lunch aides, highway workers, board of elections, etc.) who could stand to lose a great deal, including part or all of their pensions or medical benefits (even those who have already retired), that they were promised in return for their commitment to their careers in public service.

If you love anyone that is currently, or has ever been a NY public employee, please TURN YOUR BALLOT OVER and vote “NO”.

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I am a volunteer patient escort at planned parenthood

This is something I just shared on FB about my experiences as a patient escort. Just thought I’d put it on here too.

Alright y'all. Prepare for a long post, but one you should read.

Some of you know, but some of you don’t, that I volunteer at Planned Parenthood about twice a month. My official title is Volunteer Clinic Escort. My role is to safely get patients and family into the clinic safely, with privacy, and with a friendly face. Not all Planned Parenthoods (PP) have these, but the clinic where I volunteer does because we have loud, abrasive, volatile, threatening, verbally abusive and dishonest anti-choice protesters who harass people in the clinic. I would like to tell you about my experiences with them and with patients who talk to me as I stand outside with my umbrella and vest.

(I would like to note that this is not the place to tell me that abortion is wrong, that I should not support PP, that I need to stop what I’m doing. I’ve heard every argument before. In fact, I’ve had every arguement screamed in my face. You’re welcome to your opinion, but I will not be acknowledging it on here, and I ask that others ignore dissenters too. This post isn’t about me and why you think I’m wrong. It’s about what I see every time I volunteer.)

When I am volunteering, I am outside and often have patients and family members talk with me. I’m obviously not there to counsel or to offer advice medically one way or another, but I am a friendly ear and people just need to talk sometimes. Also, when volunteering, patients entering the clinic are verbally harassed by the anti choice protesters almost immediately and, while we don’t encourage it, they often yell back. The protesters don’t listen.

On my very first day, I had a person head into the clinic. As I smiled to her and went to get the door, an anti-choice protester (ACP) yelled “Mama! Don’t kill your baby!” The patient immediately responded tearfully “my baby is dead. My baby is falling out of me right now. I didn’t do anything.” The ACP, without missing a beat, screamed back through her child-sized megaphone “No he isn’t! Your doctor lied to you! These murderers just want your money!” I ushered in the patient as gently as I could while my co-volunteer told her kindly that those people didn’t matter and that in a week they wouldn’t even remember what they heard here.

In the year and a half I’ve been doing this, we have had a ACP sneak into the clinic and threaten to burn the place down. The police did nothing. We had two other ACPs try and enter the clinic to tell patients they would adopt their babies. We told them to get off the property and when they didn’t, we called the police. Eventually the ACP returned to the narrow strip of lawn they stand on at the edge of the parking lot, and luckily so, because the police never showed again.

My clinic, luckily, has never faced extreme violence while I was there. But other PP and health care clinics are not so lucky. They are burned down, have bombs planted, have clinic escorts and workers physically harmed.

They are shot at and three people die.

I have had patients tell me that they will be killed by their partner if they have an abortion. I have been told that their partner will kill them if they DON’T have one. I’ve been told how people with physical disabilities cannot carry a child without side effects so severe they may not survive. I’ve had patients explain that their mental health is at risk if they go through with the pregnancy. I’ve had patients come in with a wanted pregnancy that ended in miscarriage and they needed PPs help to safely remove the tissue. I’ve seen people come in who admit to being addicted to drugs and know they cannot go through this pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood helped all these people, not just with medical care, but with helping abused patients find help to escape violent partners. Helping those who want to conceive find fertility doctors. Helping drug addicts find resources to become healthy.

All the while, the ACP stand outside, screaming and hollering, telling women that they are murderers and whores and that they will burn for murdering their babies. But it’s ok, they do it out of love. They scream at these people and tell them awful things and then beg to have the patient come talk with them.

They don’t see the hypocrisy.

It is a rule to not engage with the ACP at all. In the year and a half I’ve been doing this, I’ve said maybe a total of 50 words to the group, all of which are some form of “you are on our property, step back right now.” I may not engage them, but we can make eye contact and make them believe we are listening. We do this so the ACP begins shouting at me, and not a patient getting air outside. I would much rather be shouted at than have them scream at a patient.

When I am being yelled at, I have been called: a murderer, a nazi, a slavery supporter, a bad mother, a bad wife (they do not know if I am married or if I have children), a witch, a lesbian, a liberal, a member of satan’s army, a Muslim lover, a bitch, a slut, and evil. Some of these things are true and some are perfectly fine things to be, but to the ACP they are all bad.

Sometimes we have patient partners come talk to the protesters. They try and explain to the ACP why they are there with their partner. I’ve heard them tell the ACP every single reason, and every single time, the protesters still tell them they are wrong and a bad father and a supporter of Satan. Every. Time. And they call this love.

Since Trump took office, one of his first orders signed was a Global Gag Rule. People thought that this rule meant that no US money would go to pay for abortions overseas, but in fact, US funds have never paid for abortions and haven’t since 1973. Even in the US, because of the Hyde Amendment, no federal funding goes to pay for abortions.

What this gag rule now does, however, is prevent money from going to clinics that even mention abortion as a method of family planning. They don’t have to perform them. If they are mentioned at all in pamphlets or classes, they lose foreign aid money. This means that now they can’t provide birth control, wellness checks, prenatal care, or classes.

This will cause unwanted pregnancies. This will cause people to seek out abortions, often in unsafe condition.

This will cause people to die.

Roughly 1/3 people with a uterus will have an abortion in their life. I haven’t spoken to everyone who has had one, but I’ve spoken to more than most. No one gets an abortion out of malice. No one gets an abortion just to end the life of a fetus, just for kicks. No. One.

Planned Parenthood provides important health services, including abortion. They do this despite the risk of physical bodily harm, every day. People like myself stand outside PP to protect patients because it is important.

We. Will. Not. Stand. Down.

I will continue to volunteer, even though since Trump was elected, the ACP have gotten more and more aggressive in their tactics, since they believe Trump supports their actions. I will continue to walk these patients inside, to get help, because it is important and right. I will continue to fight Trump the slew of anti choice people supporting him. I will continue to support choice even though I know I will lose friends and will face hatred from people I know.

Planned Parenthood is important, and we will not stand down.

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How about an AU where African and native American slavery did not happen and Europe and European Americas remained the backwater nations they were?

Alternative histories often are “twisted mirrors” meant to subdue our current present into submission via a scolding: “look how much better you have it.“ And yet it’s sold to be subversive! A truly subversive alternative history would tell us how much we live inside the twisted mirror.

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My mom will joke about “hoping for grandchildren” and pointedly look at me and my other siblings (not like right now, but she wants them in the future), but instead of it feeling like a joke it feels like we should be making this promise to her, like we owe her grandchildren because she raised us all and embraced her role of mother so well. 

Telling a woman who says she doesn’t want kids “You’ll change your mind” is really shitty because

it’s assigning motherhood to a person who is explicitly rejecting it

it’s reinforcing gender roles 

it makes motherhood out to be something you do because you have to, not because you genuinely want to

it’s infantilizing to make it seem like she can’t make decisions about her own life

it’s invalidating of her desires which she is capable of knowing and communicating

it’s telling a grown woman that you know what she wants better than she does

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*prepares pamphlet to hand out like an evangelist on a college campus*

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Oh. My. God.

Did you know that when a gun is used in a crime and cops want to trace it, people have to look through microfilm to find the owner, because it’s illegal to have a searchable database of that information?

Seriously. The NRA managed to get a law passed that makes it illegal. These people have to search by hand. 1,200 traces a day. By hand.

Cops assume they just type it into a search engine, because, like, obviously? We have all this technology that puts information at our finger tips. But not who owns the gun that killed that little girl. That you have to search through microfilm or boxes of files for.

I feel sick.

If you’re American and could ever possibly one day vote, please take the time to read this and understand how absurd it it. I cannot for a moment believe this is what reasonable Americans would choose if they understood what it actually is.

And, whoever you are, please share this, so it gets in front of more eyeballs.

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Recent history repeats itself.

Republicans and the NRA will not change and the media insists on calling white mass shooters “lone wolves”.

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Hit him where it hurts, Cassandra! (Apollo is the WORST.)

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This is the greatest progression of events I have ever read, where’s my historical gay romance novel about this

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like a year ago I saw a trailer for Some Fucking Romcom where I thought for the first thirty seconds the plot was “bride asks her gay brother and his boyfriend to get heterosexual dates for her wedding”

turns out the plot actually was “bride asks her two Commitmentphobic ™ brothers to get dates for her wedding” which, lame

I like my idea, where two gay dudes and two lesbians have to pretend to be straight for an entire weekend 

“I can definitely pretend to be straight,” Lesbian One says, “I successfully pretended to be a straight man for twenty years.”

“No,” her girlfriend Lesbian Two says, “no you definitely didn’t.”

Lesbian Two, who is butch, discovers an eyelash curler. “What is this, a torture device?”

Gay Guy One hooks up with the DJ, the wedding planner, three caterers and the best man. Shenanigans happen as he narrowly avoids getting caught by the bride.

Gay Guy Two, of course, finds himself falling hopelessly in love with the groom.

At the climax of the movie Gay Guy One falls out of the closet where he’s making out with his latest conquest, the florist. The bride screams, eyeliner smearing from tears, about how he’s RUINING HER WEDDING and she didn’t choose to have a brother who was QUEER and why didn’t he ever think about HER and why couldn’t he just pretend to be NORMAL for her SPECIAL DAY–

the groom is like “honey, I’m bi”

the bride says “no, you’re not! you’re marrying me! you’re straight now!”

and then the wedding is called off and Gay Guy Two and the groom live happily ever after. the after-credits scene is Lesbian Two suspiciously poking her eyelids with an eyelash curler

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reblog if you're gay, not gay, slightly gay, or if you just want to launch donald trump into a dying star

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Every book in the History of Literature summed up in a single sentence

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“How can we take down this flag and erase the honor of those proud Americans-”

Confederates weren’t Americans. They were actual, honest-to-god Not Americans; that was the whole fucking point of the Civil War. They were a bunch of people who collectively said “fuck America” and then spent years desperately fighting in order to not be Americans anymore. Flying the Confederate flag doesn’t honor Americans, it honors Confederates, and they don’t exist anymore because they lost the war, so there is no goddamn point to this flag ever at all. Right-wing folks really love to talk about “anti-American sentiments” and “treason” until it comes to the (white) people who actually did commit treason and were anti-American in every sense of the word. 

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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

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