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thoughts-of-the-unheard · 4 years ago

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im losing my mind in 10th grade history i wrote my final essay on serbia vs the us bc serbia was the country id studied for a project and i just reread that essay bc i legitimately couldnt remember how to start my essay for my history final this year and holy shit guys

“Taboo Topics: Serbia vs USA Differences

There are several subjects that are usually talked in hushed whispers behind closed doors with the wonderful exceptions of the few who speak out. These subjects include, but are in no way limited to, the gender pay gap, LGBT rights, rape, and abortions. With these topics, there are some very obvious differences between how Serbia and the United States handle them. Serbia deals with these forbidden matters significantly better than the United States does.

The gender pay gap has been a popular topic for a few years now. Women are always paid less than men for the same work. In certain workplaces, women are actually less likely to be hired than a man even if she has more experience or better credentials, not always but quite often. The Boston Symphony holds blind auditions. There was a point where they had to make everyone who auditioned take off their shoes because the judges were hearing the women’s heel click against the floor and unconsciously judged against them. Bias against women is a very common and, unfortunately, normal thing to see is every country for quite a few centuries. It wasn’t always this way. We were all equal once. Now, we have male sports teams getting paid thousands for losing and female teams not getting paid at all. As of 2018, women in Serbia are paid 16% less than her male coworkers for the same job (Serbian Monitor). In the lovely United States, white women get paid 19% less then her white male coworkers. That is a three percent more difference than Serbia, which is bad enough but hispanic women are paid 39% less than her white male coworkers for the same work (iwpr). The three fifths compromise ended in the 1860s, and yet. This is the worst gender bias. People who love their job are the lucky ones. Most people now work a job, or several, just to stay afloat. Everyone deserves to be able to afford at least the bare minimum; food, water, housing, healthcare, and education. When women are paid a lesser wage than men when the wages are already insufficient, they have to pick and choose. To pay a woman less just because she wasn’t born a white man is telling her she isn’t worth as much.

LGBT, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, rights is, for some reason, a very taboo subject. People all over get killed for being part of the LGBT community. Many religions are very against anything related to the LGBT community. A lot of people think they are “confused” or straight up sinners. It should not matter what people think. If a person is a person no matter how small then a person is a person no matter their gender or sexual orientation. Serbia is very good with that. “In June 2017, Ana Brnabić became the Prime Minister of Serbia, as the first woman and first openly gay person to hold the office, and the second female LGBT head of government overall (after Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir of Iceland). She was also the first Serbian Prime Minister to attend a pride parade.” (Wikipedia). America is not even ready for any female in such a high position of power while Serbia is making a bunch of firsts for women and the LGBT community. Serbia does not recognize same-sex marriages unless they are foreign but it is not illegal, either. Just in 2015, same-sex marriage was legalized in America. Millions of people were told they were not allowed to feel how they were feeling for centuries. Love was illegal. It took so long to legalize because many people in America were so freaked out about the potential risk of an LGBT person raping them or their child or infecting them or it was against their religion.

Weirdest thing is that, in the same America, when non-LGBT people rape anyone, they are less likely to go to jail than any other criminal, even murderers. According to Rainn, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, 995 out of 1000 perpetrators in America will walk free. With 38.6 cases of rape for every 100,000 population, as of 2015, that is a lot scarier than the bisexual girl that lives down the street who has no interest in her friend in the same way that she wouldn’t if she was straight. LGBT people are not the problem. Rapists and the morally gray judges who let them walk without so much as a smack on the wrist because it was only one person and they don’t have a history of this sort of thing, are. The victim is never the issue. Ever. People are terrified to tell anyone they were raped because they could lose their friends and even their job. The victim. The victim who was brave enough to speak out against a violation of their body and mind. They have a higher chance of losing their job than their rapists does of going to jail. They have a higher chance of dying from whooping cough, which has a 0.52 death rate in America, then their rapist has of going to jail. Statistically, in America, someone is sexually assaulted every 92 seconds (RAINN). An estimated 63% of sexual assaults are not even reported. Very largely, in part to the low incarceration rate. In 2010, America was ranked first in 117 countries for number of rapes. Serbia was 45th. One was 1177 times more likely to get raped in America than in Serbia. As of 2015, the Serbian rate of rape cases per 100,000 was 0.7 (Knoema). Serbia is 55 times safer in these terms. They have an astronomically lower rape rate than the United States does.

Serbia has a very high amount of abortions. Taking into consideration that Serbia severely lacked even a decent sex education system to inform their people about safe-sex. Approximately 12% of sexually active women were using condoms in the 1970s and 1980s (Wikipedia). Because of the awful education, abortion was the leading method of birth control. Serbia allows abortion up to ten weeks of pregnancy for a regular case. Twenty weeks is allowed for special cases such as “rape, incest, psychological trauma and socioeconomic reasons” (Women on Waves). Unheard of in America, abortions in Serbia “can be obtained for free as it is covered by the healthcare.” (Women on Waves). The United States does not have nearly as high of an official abortion rate because every woman, and even some men, get verbally harassed for walking into a place that happens to give abortions even if they are there for any other medical reason. Recently though, Ohio, Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky have all passed heartbeat bills that make abortion illegal after six weeks. Most women do not realize they are pregnant until almost halfway through their first trimester. Six weeks pregnant is two weeks late on a woman’s period. Texas, Florida, New York, Missouri, Louisiana, South Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Minnesota plan on also passing the heartbeat bill this year. Alabama has made a near-total ban on abortion. Birth control, IUDs, and similar things are going to be banned in Ohio. Birth control could stop a fertilised egg from implanting in the uterus and will be considered an abortion, which is already banned. Birth control has about six other uses that have nothing to do with preventing pregnancy. Georgia will prosecute women who plan to leave the state to get an abortion in a state where it is legal. This follows people out of Georgia. This makes women property of the state. Ohio is currently forcing an eleven year old girl, who was raped, carry her rapists child to delivery. Ohio, one of the free states of America, in 2019, is forcing a child, who is in fifth or sixth grade, to carry the child of the man who raped her, for nine months and then give birth. Childbirth is one of the most painful things ever and Ohio is forcing a literal child to go through it.

Serbia may, on a governmental level, be a mess but at least their people are treated well. Despite Serbia being a conflict magnet country and America being “the land of the free”, Serbia generally has less restrictions and more acceptance with these choice issues and maybe -probably- even more. Serbia has a lesser pay gap, an openly gay, female prime minister, less chances of being raped, and abortion is legal and free because of healthcare that makes sense. Serbia is far from perfect but it is undoubtedly closer than America.”

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thisislizheather · 5 years ago

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The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West - A Review

I’ve been waiting for this book of essays to come out for months and it was so, so worth the the wait. I know it’s asking a lot, but can this woman please just write a book every year? Or every six months? That’d be great, thanks. Favourite parts ahead!

“This moment in history is about more than individual interactions between individual people. Those matter, too - it matters how you made your subordinate feel with that comment, and it matters quite a lot that the woman on the bus went home and sobbed after you groped her - but, as Rebecca Traister wrote in December 2017 on The Cut: “This moment isn’t just about sex. It’s about work.” It’s about who feels at home in the workplace and who feels like an outsider - which, by extension, dictates who gets to thrive and ascend, who gets to hire their replacements, who gets to set their children up for success, who gets credit and glory, and who gets forgotten. It’s about who feels safe in public spaces and who doesn’t. Which is to say, it’s about everything.”

“We gobble up cable news’ insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park’s insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stance on anything opens us up to criticism.”

“We kept letting Adam Sandler make more movies after Little Nicky, because white men are allowed to fail spectacularly and keep their jobs.”

There’s literally an entire chapter on Adam Sandler movies that is perfection. You have to read it. Seriously, just pick this up at a bookstore and read that one chapter, if nothing else.

I loved all of her points about how there was endless discussion about The Ted Bundy Tapes when it came out earlier this year and how we debated whether this murdering monster was handsome or not. And how that same type of debate is somehow in the same arena as when people debate whether Elizabeth Warren is “likable” or not.

There’s a part in the Ted Bundy special where the judge sympathizes with Bundy and goes on a ridiculous tangent about how it’s “such a shame” that he turned out that way when he had so much potential, it’s truly disgusting to see a judge commiserate with a rapist and murderer, but it happened and it’s wild to see. “That anecdote is often held up as evidence of Bundy’s charisma - even the judge sentencing him to death was seduced by that smirk, that finger wave. But it is the most blatant, overwhelming evidence we have for the opposite. Men don’t need charisma to succeed. It doesn’t matter if men are likable, because men are people who do things, who don’t have to ask first, whose potential has value even after it is squandered.”

“Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.”

Absolutely in love with the fact that she loves the movie Clue as much as I do.

I really liked the chapter that she discussed Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, even if I did wish that she went in on her/the brand harder.

So in love with the chapter where she talks about South Park and its creators. I’ve always hated that show, it’s never been good, and I can’t understand who the hell would be into it. It’s never been funny, edgy, smart. Insane that it’s still on.

Maybe I’m really reading into it, but there’s a tiny part where she mentions that PETA sucks and I can’t stop all my little inside screams - it’s hard to find somewhere who dislikes all the same stuff as you.

“Men think that misogyny is a women’s issue; women’s to endure and women’s to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the white working class. Rape is a rape victim’s problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?“

“Whenever talk turned toward solutions, the panel came back to mentorship: women lifting up other women. Assertiveness and leaning in and ironclad portfolios and marching into that interview and taking the space you deserve and changing the ratio and not letting Steve from accounting talk over you in the morning. During the closing question-and-answer period, a young woman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice electric with anger, “but all I’ve heard tonight are a bunch of things women can do to fight sexism. Why is that our job? We didn’t build the system. This audience should be full of men.”

“Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well intentioned by floundering, as though they are not the experts. You are the experts. Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install that glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”

When talking about what men can actually do to help women: ”“Do you ever stick up for me?” sounds childish, but I don’t know that gussying up the sentiment in more sophisticated language would enhance its meaning. It isn’t fun to be the one who speaks up. Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian. A result is that, for the most part, the only people weathering those consequences are the ones who don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. Women, already impeded and imperiled by sexism, also have to carry the social stigma of being feminist buzzkills if they call attention to it. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting. What we could use is some loud, unequivocal backup.”

“I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the boys’ club; if you seem too opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that, too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.”

The entire chapter about the complications with Joan Rivers is such a great one.

“You can hate someone and love them at the same time. Maybe that’s a natural side effect of searching for heroes in a world not built for you.”

Okay, so the only thing that we strongly disagree on is her previous love for Adam Carolla. Always hated that man.

““Common sense’” without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness.”

“There are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get older. Then there are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get better.”

“Art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores. They are letting obsolescence devour them, voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable.”

Talking about Ricky Gervais:” “People see something they don’t like, and they expect it to stop,” he said. “The world is getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, I think I lived through the best fifty years of humanity, 1960 through 2015, the peak of civilization for everything. For tolerances, for freedoms, for communication, for medicine! And now it’s going the other way a little bit.” “Dumpster fire” has emerged as the favorite emblem of our present sociopolitical moment, but that Gervais quote feels more apt and more tragic as a metaphor: the Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”

“Adam Carolla isn’t angry because he’s being silenced; he’s angry because he’s being challenged. He’s been shown the road map to continued relevance, and it doesn’t lead back to his mansion. He’s angry because he’s being asked to do the basic work of maintaining a shared humanity or else be left behind. He’s choosing the past. Gervais and Carolla are not alone in presenting themselves as noble bulwarks against a wave of supposed leftwing censorship. (A Netflix special, for the record, is not what “silencing” looks like.)”

Talking Louis CK: “Less than a year after his vow to retreat and listen, CK made the laziest and most cowardly choice possible: to turn away from the difficult, necessary work of self-reflection, growth, and reparation, and run into the comforting arms of people who don’t think it’s that big a deal to show your penis to female subordinates. Conservatives adore a disgraced liberal who’s willing to pander to them because he’s too weak to grow. How pathetic to take them up on it.”

“Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.” - This is probably my most favourite line in the entire book

“Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”

“I’d been taught that when ordinary people try to do activism, they look stupid. Of course now I know that there is no effective activism without the passion and commitment of ordinary people and it is a basic duty of the privileged to show up and fight for issues that don’t affect us directly. But maintaining that separation has served the status quo well. It keeps good people always just shy of taking action. It’s tone policing. It’s the white moderate. But it’s changing.”

“Diet culture is a coercive, misogynist pyramid scheme that saps women’s economic and political power.”

Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year. GO BUY!

#The Witches Are Coming #Lindy West #this is liz heather #Liz Heather #book review #great book 2019 #great book fall 2019 #feminist #feminism book #feminism

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idealisticrealism · 7 years ago

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Blindspot 3x05 recap

Aka the one where all my sons are idiots and all my daughters are precious angels who deserve all the hugs.

Late again, because when am I not? Again, I blame the travelling.

So I’m kinda intrigued by this pair; the bleeding, accented woman and the young guy with an American accent in what seems to be a super-dingy bathroom? What is going on here??

Patterson has been doing some fancy analysing of the adoption records and yeppp, Jane definitely had a kid. And ugh Patterson is so sweet and gentle about it and has done so much research so she could give Jane ALL the info and Jane is just Not Dealing. But hmmm Patterson tells her there’s no way to test if she’s had a child and lbr that’s not exactly true? A good ObGyn could generally tell just by looking at the cervix. Not a perfect measure, but it’s definitely an option. But anyhow Jane is too busy flipping out anyway, and ugh she mentions the Taylor Shaw thing and already having everything ripped away from her multiple times and man my heart just hurts for her rn. And Weller’s so at a loss for what to do or how to comfort her ugh my poor babies

Lol Reade and Zapata and their little Wizardville rivalry is super cute. And then she’s completely open with him and asks him directly about the State Department Guy thing and wow Reade just harshly shuts her down. I’m glad Patterson interrupts this little moment because it was definitely going nowhere good. But speaking of things that ARE good, omg I love her pun about the ‘backbone’ of the case and Weller being all killjoy about it haha. That’s right, honey, just ignore him. Your humour is too good for him anyway. And so anyhow the tatt leads to a NYPD evidence log number, though Zapata notes that the code is different to what the NYPD uses now, and Reade gets super snarky at her for it. Geez son, learn some manners! Patterson backs Zapata up tho (yaaassss my girls), showing that the code is like 20 years old. Jeller go to check out the warehouse it points to while Zapata is given paperwork by Reade (wow, petty), though tbh Zapata ends up with the better deal since Jeller have to fight some bad guys and literally put out a fire. Ugh the way Jane yells for him as she tries to fight the fire alone-- it’s only when its the two of them together that they manage to extinguish it. Symbolism, much? Patterson calls right at that moment to warn them to get out, and it’s a little late, but well, it’s the thought that counts haha. Other warehouses have been burned, which means someone is trying super hard to destroy evidence but doesn’t know where it is. Jane, because she’s amazing, finds the box they nee-- and in it is a whole bunch of untested rape kits going back 20 years. I love the conversation the guys have about the low priority assigned to sexual assault testing-- it’s some good commentary from the writers about the state of the real world.

Meanwhile, Stuart’s phone has been found in the river, and both Patterson and Zapata are very suspicious of the way Reade basically tells her to leave it alone. Looking super suss rn, bro, and I do not like it at allll.

However, I really DO like listening to Jane speak in other languages. So damn cool. And as someone who is currently staying in a foreign country and communicating solely in the local tongue, I have a renewed respect for her fluency lol. Their Russian suspect conveniently elects to speak English though haha. How handy. He’s a bit of a tough guy but through a sneaky move on Jeller’s part, he gives them the info they need-- how he got paid, which gives them a lead on the people hiring him. Patterson also drops another pun, which is three so far this ep and I’m so proud. She also figures out that the the victim was likely linked to Kazarus, which as far as I’m aware is a fake place though tbh my geography is not super great. But anyhow, that narrows their search to two sexual assault survivors.

And then aww Patterson pulls Weller aside and tries to support him about the whole surprise-kid thing, and ugh she’s just so sweet and wants to help both him and Jane as best she can. But he’s upset bc he knows he can’t fix this; no one can. I guess it all just takes time, right? Meanwhile Jane’s in the locker room, getting a call from Roman, and dude he really knew the whole time?? And ugh if she was sixteen when she had the baby (to her high school sweetheart aww) then he was probably about 14 at the time, just a kid himself who had suddenly become an uncle, and man I’m so sad for them both?? But lol she gets to the bullpen and covers the phone while practically yelling for them to trace the call. Not super subtle, Jane. And he tells her she initially fought Shepherd on giving the baby away and then she just ran away? I’m confused. I guess we now understand a bit more about why Remi joined the army though I guess. Not sure how she ever went back to working for Shepherd, though, but maybe she saw the memory wipe as a way out? And Beardy was meant to fill her in on everything including the kid. Idk. Jane’s now having a small breakdown in the locker room and decides she has to go see Shepherd, but Weller’s right when he says that Shepherd would just mess with her head. Don’t give her the satisfaction, Jane! And oh look, a mention of Bethany, haven’t had one of those in a while. And tbh that’s the way I like it, show, so keep ignoring her existence please haha.

In the lab, Patterson admits defeat about Stuart’s phone-- it’s as dead as he is. (Too soon??) But Zapata didn’t spend all that time at the CIA without gaining a few skills in the realms of deception and deviousness, and so they hatch a plan to bluff and lure out the possible mole. And then a lab tech in a headscarf calls them to see something, and the panning shot of the lab also shows another tech in a turban. Firstly, I approve of some diversity happening here, and secondly, I hope that this casting choice was deliberate so there would be people that looked at those characters and went “the traitor has to be one of them” so that when it’s shown that the traitor is someone else, the people watching have to examine just why it was that they thought either of these two background characters were guilty. (Hint: it’s racism!). Anyhow, the rape kit in question has been tested, and it turns out the rapist is the king of Kazarus. Or, the former king, since he died and his brother has assumed the throne. The only spanner in the works being that the rape resulted in a child, who, as per the Kazarussian monarchy, is the rightful heir to the throne. Which naturally means that Scar’s gotta have him taken out. Now we know who we saw at the start of the ep-- the kid and his mother, who was clearly attacked by the assassins but escaped. Now it’s a race for the team to find them before the Kazarussians do.

And then who appears but Weitz, who is now a congressman, and conveniently an expert on Kazarus. I love that everyone looks at Hirst and she’s all “Don’t look at me, Darlins” and how is someone using ‘darling’ in plural like that so damn endearing??? The accent is what truly makes it though, obviously. But nope, it was Reade who called him, which is just another in the list of things Reade has done lately that we do not like. Weitz manages to make everyone hate him even more within mere seconds of showing up, and tbh I love to hate him. His antagonism towards Zapata is hilarious. I like that even Hirst gives him some shit lol. Atta girl. Anyhow Weitz informs them that the ex-king’s brother Cyrus is a Bad Dude and there’s a bunch of american soldiers in Kazarus that are now at risk, and yep the stakes have just been raised

Reade gets called into the principal’s office to discuss his little spat with Zapata. How exactly does Hirst know about that, though? Though I guess if she’s paid attention to any of their interactions today then she probably could have figured it out. I’m offended that he calls Zapata a busybody?? But then he does at least say that she’s nothing to worry about and that she’s a friend. What do you two have to hide though??? Meanwhile in the lab, Patterson has found the kid by examining the curtains in a video that the kid sent to his gf. That’s my lil genius. Of course it’s super convenient that this type of curtain is only made for a specific motel chain, but whatevs, I’ll let it slide as I do with many things in this show haha. I love Zapata teasing Weitz though, suggesting that it was all too smart for him and went over his head haha

Jane’s clearly taking this case pretty personally-- and tbh it does seem veeeeeeeery convenient that there’s a case that resonates so closely with her current situation, until you remember that this time around, all the tattoos are specifically designed by Roman to be revealed in a certain order, so it makes total sense that the case matches stuff going on in their personal lives. More sense than when it happened in the last two seasons, so touche, writers. You win this round. Anyway they get to the hotel, and the kid immediately pulls a gun on them. His mom’s not looking too good though, kinda bleeding out a little on the bed, and ugh Jane does her frightened-animal whisperer thing and convinces the kid to let her help his mom. Naturally he chooses to trust her bc lbr wouldn’t you?? They get his mom to the hospital where she’s super well guarded, and he tells them about only learning at 18 about his mother’s attack. And he only learned yesterday about the whole king thing, and tells them he’ll never go to Kazarus. You just know that Jane is thinking about her baby and how the kid probably wouldn’t want to know her as they must think she abandoned them, and ugh it hurts. Why must you do this, show?

Back in the lab Patterson and Zapata have set their trap, and are waiting to see who falls into it-- only they don’t like the answer. According to her computer, Reade logged into the system to delete the files. Patterson is grim; she doesn’t like it, but she’s ready to believe it. When Zapata tries to insist that Reade wouldn’t do it, that he’s family, Patterson just reminds her: Borden was family too. And ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I do not like this at all. I am so done with leaks and moles and traitors and all of it ugh. I do appreciate Weitz for making me smile here; Zapata is back at her desk and he throws a paper airplane at her, then feigns confusion, looking around for who could have done it. Tbh I actually do ship these two a little bit. All the bickering just does it for me lol. She gives him shit about probably not going to be re-elected, but he says he’s doing great in the polls. She says polls have been wrong before-- and is that some political commentary I hear? Man who was the writer of this ep because they are not pulling punches today. Reade comes over and tries to mend bridges, which tbh tastes a little sour after he was such an asshole this morning... give him nothing, Zapata!

Looks like Yasmine is gonna live, which is nice. She and Jane bond a little over protecting kids etc while Weller and the kid go to get something from the vending machine--- and ugh when they’re coming back Wller notices their guard from the door is gone and pushes the kid behind him. I love protective Weller. I also love Weller throwing an injured woman over his shoulder and carrying her to safety. Damn. He also proved pretty smart-- when they realised that the baddies were on their FBI comms, he bluffed and reported that they were headed for the roof while they escaped out the front door instead. Nice. Though why do I feel like that escape was too easy?

Patterson has figured out that it’s not Reade that’s tampering with their evidence, but someone else using his login. She confesses to Zapata about the backdoor that Wizardville gives her into people’s phones, and says she’s never used it before, which isn’t true though right?? Didn’t she use it on that Lowie guy’s lawyer a few eps ago? Anyway Zapata doesn’t care about the illegal biz, she just wants to hear her best(?) friend’s name cleared. Turns out he wasn’t even in the building when someone used an FBI computer to access their files, so that’s at least looking good for him, even if it is bad for them as a whole

Weller reports in, and the team tracks their phones and immediately sends backup-- but too late, considering that the baddies have laid out a trap for them. Was this why it was so easy for them to get away?? Jeller manage to take out several bad dudes on their own, but not before one of them manages to molotov-cocktail their car, which blows up moments later. Dude that’s one potent cocktail… but ugh they all make it to safety, with Weller again literally carrying Yasmine, and ugh the mother and son hug and the husband and wife hug and it’s just a very poignant moment okay?? Also there’s just something really beautiful about the way Jane hugs, I can’t even really describe it. Anyhow they all make it back to the NYO, where the rest of the team (plus Weitz, in his own way) are super glad to see them alive. After a minute Zapata and Patterson sneak off, because Patterson needs to tell her the news-- the person using Reade’s login was Hirst. She’s sure because of biometric software that she runs on all of their computers, and again, man I’m super glad that these powers are in the hands of someone trustworthy like Patterson haha. But ugh this means my honey-accented cool aunt is a baddie?? She even knew that Lowie guy from a few eps ago. Well, bummer. Still holding out for the possibility that there’s more to it, but things aren’t looking great...

Oh dear, King Cyrus was murdered, and the Kazarussians are demanding their heir. Which really sucks for the kid, and Jane and Weller try to protect him, but he’s determined to go and to make things better for his fellow Kazarussians. And lbr, to have to go become king is not the worst thing??

Wow Patterson and Zapata actually went to Reade to warn him about Hirst. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I would have done some more surveillance or something first? But anyway he is really not taking it well, and kinda attacks both of them a bit over it. And wait he’s known Hirst since he was in Quantico??? That’s news to me. And not good news, either. Please don’t be dirty, Reade. Please…

Jeller are recovering at home after a pretty damn rough day. Jane has changed her mind about finding her daughter-- she wants her just to have a happy, stable life, and that willl be far easier if she never knows Jane exists. And he just hugs her bc what can you do to make that pain better? Nothing, that’s what. She’s going to mourn her connection with her daughter for the rest of her life and ugh it just really sucks

Oh no a time jump, nothing good ever follows a time jump. And oh shit it’s Berlin. Weller’s having no luck with a rude hotel employee, which I find super unbelievable because a) he’s front desk staff at a fancy hotel, b) the person asking him for help is a man clearly traumatised about his missing wife, and c) he’s German. Him being rude makes no sense. But it does give this girl a cool opening to come help Weller out, and man I am jealous of her German speaking skills. Like I said earlier, it’s not easy!! But wait, there’s more. The girl is not only American, but she’s looking for Jane. Her mother, Jane. And oh Weller, you stupid, stupid boy. You foolish, well-meaning idiot. I am sure that your reasons for not telling Jane about this are all purely to protect her (although I also suspect you’re trying to protect yourself from her leaving you again) but dude. DUDE. This is not the kind of secret you should ever keep, and honestly if Jane leaves your ass when she finds out the truth I’m gonna be on her side of the split. Ugh, my stupid son when will you ever LEARN

#Blindspot #Jeller #Blindspot recap

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smokeybrandcompositions · 7 years ago

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Takedown

With the news that Matt Lauer was fired from his job this morning over sexual misconduct, I wanted to take the time to address what’s going on with all of these accusations being thrown around. To be clear, I support all of these people coming forward disclosing their very real, very damaging, experiences about the seedy under belly of Hollywood. Even if the assaults occurred 70 years ago, the trauma that person carries is still relevant and they still deserve to be heard, even if the legal statute has long been expired. That’s why when R. Kelly was accused of pissing on that little girl, I stopped supporting his music. Kells has always been into young girls. Always. He married Aaliyah when she was 16 or some sh*t and he has a goddamn ego the size of Texas so why is it so farfetched to believe he’d record himself pissing on a little girl? That sh*t is power, not affection. He peed on that girl because the rush of being able to do it, turned him on. The power he had over that girl is what aroused him, not the act. That sh*t is f*cked up. Forget the fact that he had hard drives upon hard drive upon hard drives loaded with child pornography. No, R. Kelly was tried and acquitted because public opinion dictated he was “too good” to be a scumbag. Fast forward to present and he apparently keeps sex slaves now. Like, that kind of behavior is a direct escalation of him getting away with pissing on that teenager all those years ago.

Then there’s Bill Cosby. This Jell-O pudding pot, church sweater wearin’ ass, Heathcliff Huxtable scumbag has been drugging and raping women for almost a half century. He’d hit them with the ‘Ludes and these women would wake up with Cosby literally on top of them, inside of them. My dude, that’s the textbook definition of date rape. Seriously, Cosby would roofie chicks and then just carry on like nothing happened. For decades. Decades. Because he was Bill Cosby. Because he had that power behind his name. It took Hannibal Burress telling a joke in passing about this to even be a thing. Eventually, one by one, these women came forward, most for a second of third time. See, these victims weren‘t silent, they were silenced. Being Bill Cosby has a certain way about it that keep the people you victimized, often people looking to gain fame and recognition in an industry that you dominate, quiet. But, because of Hannibal, women found their voice to speak up. And it was LOT of women. Cosby has been accused by 57 women since the 60s, I think, of rape. 57. That’s almost a yearly assault. Look, I get it. Maybe not all of these women have a case. Maybe all of them., But those numbers are WAY too high for there not to be an issue. I subscribe to the principal of where there’s smoke, there’s fire and that right there is the most smoke ever. Mathematically, he had to have assaulted at least handful of these women and even one is unforgivable. And we have that admission from Cosby, himself. In a sealed deposition (which was unsealed for his retrial a couple of months back) Cosby out right admits he drugged and raped a woman. He did that. But because the case was settled, one of the stipulations was that she never speak out and this admission doesn’t go public. But it did. So how is Cosby still a free man? He’s an admitted rapist and, very likely, as serial one, too. How does a predator like that not rot in a cell? Because he’s Bill Cosby. This is a man that had aspirations of buying NBC or whatever before all of this happened. When you got clout like that, you get o do what you want apparently. When you’ve done what Cosby’s done, you get a pass because of how much you’ve enriched the community. Hypo shouldn’t but apparently, in the eye of the public, you do.

How about the mother of all PR nightmares, Harvey Weinestein. This is a guy that not only raped a tone of women by using his clout as a producing wunderkind in Hollywood, but would get into physical altercations with cats who disagreed with him. He as a f*cking abusive psychopath and everyone knew it! Tina Faye wrote jokes about it into 30 Rock! Seth McFarlane went in on the dude during his stint as Oscar host! There were all sorts of NDAs signed and payouts dropped. And not just for his brazenly rampant sexual assaults but for just general emotional, physical, and mental abuse. Cats in -house at Miramax and The Weinstein Company have had to deal with his violent outbursts and disrespect for years. Even his own goddamn brother has a story about Harvey literally beating him into submission! This asshole would never have been allowed to continue what has become a 4 decade crusade of just plain predatory behavior. Dude’s thrall of abuse is so grand, it’s capturing and sinking other star’s careers. Glazing over the fact that the Weinstein Company, itself, is in a bad way because of all of this sh*t, Ben Affleck had to do damage control because, as people looked into Harvey, he started to look not so dope. Matt Damon, too, had to come out and distance himself from some inappropriate behavior. F*cking Quentin Tarantino admitted he knew the rumors, heard the stories, but never witnessed the actions first hand so he let it slide. Cat enabled Weinstein to continue his rampage by staying silent. What does Harvey do? Hire a PR company to clean house. Never mind the fact that he’s raped a bunch of women for decades. Never mind the fact that he’s a documented abusive boss. Never mind the fact that he’s a very real monster who abused the sh*t out of his position, unapologetically. Never mind all of that .Instead, he just goes intro rehab and vows to take down Trump or some sh*t. Really? You’re a serial predator, dude, you don’t get a pass just because you sought “help” in Arizona. Help you never really accepted. Help you bailed on in a week. Help you ultimately don’t believe you need. And that’s the rub; Harvey Weinstein doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong. He thinks the movie industry needs him. He thinks because his company has all of these accolades, and awards, and classic films, that he’s had a hand in so many Oscars and can make or break a career, that he deserves all of the things. He believes because he IS Harvey Weinstein, that he’s ENTITLED to do these horrific thing that he’s been exposed doing. To him, this is how you do business. To him, the fact that he can make your career is more than enough compensation for you to drop your panties and bend over. But it’s not. It never is. And a decent f*cking human being would understand that. But Harvey Weinstein is NOT a decent f*cking human being. He’s a goddamn predator scumbag that deserves to be castrated. Fuck your contribution to the history of Hollywood. You’re entire legacy now is the fact that you had to rape women because none of them wanted to be with you.

The list goes on and on. I mean Roman Polanski anally raped a 13 year old back in the 70s,admitted to doing it, and then fled the country because he didn’t like how harsh his punishment was. That mother*cker has been a fugitive for decades but he still gets to make movies. He still gets American releases. Asshole has even won an Oscar, as a pedophile fugitive. When Cory Haim was 13. he was raped by Charlie Sheen. He was quoted as saying that Charlie convinced him that this was an open secret in Hollywood, that someone has done it to Charlie when he was young. This was just the way of the business. Haim being 13, didn’t understand and took Charlies illegal, disgusting, and lascivious behavior as true affection and fell in love with him. He said they had one more sexual encounter when he was 16 and Charlie cut him off after that. It was then he understood Charlie Sheen cared. Even though Haim , himself, was in love with Charlie Sheen, he understood Charlie would never reciprocate those feelings. Charlie, of course, denies all of this and so does Haim’s mother but she does seem to take issue with Michael Jackson a little bit. And that in itself is a whole bag of worms. That cat had an entire secret room devoted to child pornography and bondage equipment built into Neverland Ranch. That’s a thing. He openly admits to getting the kids he hung out with drunk on wine he had in soda cans. He called it his “Jesus Juice”. Michael Jackson was a predator .He assaulted and molested children, I believe that in my heart of hearts. But no one talks about it. Or, at least, no one seriously talks about it because, 1. He dead and 2. He’s Michael Jackson. This man made Thriller. Surely his contribution to the arts is enough to looks passed the fact he sexually victimized untold amounts of children in his lifetime. Then there’s Louis C.K. and his disgusting masturbation in front of women or Bryan Singer’s world famous twink parties where he more or less seduces young boys with a very particular body type in to sex (seriously, you should hear the story behind how that Sheridan kid got the role for Young Cyclops in Apocalypse. It’s ridiculous) with him in order to be in one of his films or the fact that Donald Trump went to trial a month before his inauguration for kidnapping and raping a 14 year old girl along side a known, convicted, pedophile who went the jail fir the exact same thing. How about those three times James Van Der Beek was molested or that agent that walked up to Terry Crews and literally fondled his dick in front of his wife with no fear of reprisal or the way Ben Affleck treated Hilary Burton, on camera, when she worked for MTV or how Kevin Spacey attempted to rape a 14 year old boy in the late 80s, only to have him come out of the closet while dismissing and distracting from his victim’s very real claims or that whole disgusting and very sad situation Brett Ratner has gotten into. I mean sad, as in the actions he’s taken during the accusations are just real sad, not that I have sympathy for his sudden notoriety. Dry humping chicks until climax is just the saddest thing I have ever heard, man. All of the kink shame. All of it. Oh, also, Russell Simmons apparently raped a girl while Ratner watched. The f*ck, man?? These things don’t exist in a vacuum and are inexcusable. Cats in positions of power have been doing this type of sh*t for as long as someone was in charge of someone else and it’s disgusting. You can’t reduce people to things and treat them however you want. That’s common decency and, for far too long, cats have gotten away with it because the weight of their “art” as it is, outweighs people’s lives. How f*cked up is that logic??

Look, I adore Pulp Fiction. Inglourious Basterds is one of my all-time favorite film. Hans Landa, and Christoph Waltz’s performance therein, is one of the best I have ever had the pleasure to witness. Tarantino put his foot in that flick. Doesn’t mean Weinisten gets a pass for brutalizing women because he funded that flick. He doesn’t get a pass because he’s more or less supported Tarantino’s genius every step of his career. I love the fact that Bill Cosby had the wherewithal to use his clout and bring a black family to television that didn’t live in the projects or a junk yard or some other inner city cliché. I love the fact that Fat Albert is a thing and that Jell-O pudding pops are delicious. But that doesn’t mean he gets a pass for raping 57 women. Yo, 12 Play is a classic album and will go down in history as a true classic but that doesn’t mean R. Kelly gets to skirt the fact that he’s a pedophile and rapist. Just because you make, or had a hand in making, dope sh*t, doesn’t ,mean you get to do whatever you want, to whoever you want. Your legacy isn’t going to be all of those Grammys or Oscars. It’s not going to be all of those SAG awards or Platinum albums. Your legacy is going to be one of violence, cruelty, and exploitation. You are a criminal and rapist. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve contributed to the culture. You don’t get a pass for your atrocious behavior just because you made dope sh*t. You are a scumbag and you deserve everything coming to you, be it career ruin or legitimate prison time. F*ck who you think you are or what you deserve. You’re less than the dirt on the bottom of my shoe and I hope you rot away in your alienation and/or time served.

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smokeybrand · 7 years ago

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Takedown

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