#I’m going to talk to my professor about how picking this racist book doesn’t achieve what she wants it to today

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

Good morning!

[that-disabled-radfem]

Happy back-to-school y’all

I’ve attended and worked at a couple of super liberal universities. I avoid the gender studies departments for obvious reasons and I still had a lecture in which the female prof gave a brief overview of TERFs and proclaimed her hatred of JKR. Being openly critical of gender ideology, the porn industry, kinks, and ‘sex work’ are the kind of things that can ruin your future in academia. Not to mention the fact that any speech or actions that could be labelled transphobic (ie. defining woman as adult human female) can get you a suspension according to many universities anti-hate-speech policies. 

So, here’s a list of small and smallish (small in terms of overt TERFery, some may require more effort than others) radical feminist actions you can take as a university student:

(this is a liberal arts perspective so if you’re a stem gal this may not apply. but also if you’re in stem maybe you can actually acknowledge that women are oppressed as a sex class without getting kicked out of school. idk)

(Note for TRAs hate reading this: One of the core actions of radical feminism is creating female networks. This is not so that we can brainwash people into being anti-trans. This is because female solidarity is necessary for creating class consciousness and overturning patriarchy. It is harder to subjugate the female sex when we stand together.)

Take classes with female profs. Multiple sections of a class? Pick the one taught by a woman. Have to chose an elective? Only look at electives offered by women. When classes have low numbers they get cancelled. When classes are super popular, universities are forced to consider promoting the faculty that teach them

Make relationships with these female profs. Go to office hours. Chat after class. Ask them about their research. Building female networks is sooooo important!

Actually fill in your end of year course feedback forms. Profs often need these when applying for tenure or applying for a job at another university so it is very important (especially with young and/or new profs) that you fill out these forms and give specific examples of how great these women are. Go off about what you love about them! Give her a brilliant review because you know the idiot boy in that class who won’t shut up even though he knows nothing is going to give her only negative feedback because he thinks any woman who leaves the house is a feminazi b*tch. 

(note: obviously don’t go praising any prof - female or male - who is blatantly racist, homophobic, etc.)

(Also if you have shitty male profs write down all the horrible things they have done and said and put it in these forms because once a shitty man gets tenure they are virtually untouchable)

(also also, leave a good review on rate my profs or whatever other thing students use to figure out if they want to take classes. idc if you copy paste your feedback from the formal review. rave about the class to your friends. do what you can to get good enrolment for that prof for reasons above.)

Participate in class. Talk over the male students. Say what you mean and mean it. Call out the boys when they say dumb shit

Write about women. If you have the option to make a text written by a woman your primary text in an essay, do it. Pick the female-centred option if you’re writing an exam-essay with multiple prompts. (Profs often look at what works on their syllabus are being written about/engaged with as a marker of whether to keep those texts the next time they teach the class. If there are badass women on your syllabus, write about them to keep them on the syllabus) Use female-written secondary sources whenever possible. 

(pro tip: many women in academia are more than happy to talk to you about their papers. expand your female networks by reaching out to article authors through email and asking them about their cool shit)

Get your essays published! Many departments have undergrad journals you can publish in. This will ensure more people read about the women you write about and will demonstrate to the department that people like learning about women

Consider trying to publish your undergrad essay with a legit peer-reviewed journal. If you can do it, your use of female-written secondary sources boosts the reputations of the women who wrote those secondary sources. Also this helps generally to increase scholarship about women’s writing!

Present your papers at conferences! Many schools have their own undergraduate/departmental conferences that you can present at. Push yourself by submitting to outside conferences. Bring attention to women’s works by presenting your papers. Take a space at a conference that would otherwise be reserved for mediocre men

Talk to your profs and/or your department and/or your university about mandating the inclusion of female works in classes if this isn’t something they do already

Sit next to other women in your classes. Talk to them. Make friends. Form study groups. Proofread each other’s essays. Give each other knowing looks when the boys are being dumb. Just interact with other women! Build those female networks!

Be generous with your compliments. A female classmate and I were talking to a prof after class and the classmate told me (out of the blue) that I always have such interesting things to say. I think about that whenever I’m lacking confidence about my academic skills. Compliment the women in your classes for speaking up, for sharing their opinions, for challenging your classmates/profs, for doing cool presentations, etc.

Talk to other women about sexist things going on on campus. Make everyone aware of the sexist profs. Complain about how there are many more tenured men than tenured women. Go on rate my professor and be explicit about how the sexist profs are sexist

Be active on campus and in societies. If a society has an all male executive or is male-dominated, any women who join that society make it less intimidating for more women to join. Run for executive positions! Bring in more women! 

(Pro tip: Many societies’ elections are super gameable. You can be eligible to vote in a society election sometimes just by being a student at that university — even without having done anything with the society before. Other societies might just require that you’ve taken a class in a particular department or attended a society event. (Check the society’s governing documents.) Use those female networks you’ve been building. If you can bring three or four random people to vote for you, that might be enough for you to win. Societies have trouble meeting quorum (the minimum number of people in attendance to do votes) so it is really super achievable to rig an election with a few friends. And don’t feel bad about this. The system is rigged against women so you have every right to exploit loopholes!)

(Also feel free to go vote “non-confidence”/“re-open election” if only shitty men are running. Too often people see that only candidates they don’t like are running and so they give up. But you can actually stop them getting elected)

Your campus may have a LGBTQIA+alphabetsoup society. That society definitely needs more L and B women representation. It may be tedious to argue with the nb straight dudes who insist that it’s fine to use “q***r” in the society’s posters and that attraction has nothing to do with genitals, but just imagine what could happen if we could make these sorts of societies actually safe spaces for same-sex attracted women and advocated for our concerns

Attend random societies’ election meetings. Get women elected and peace out. (or actually get involved but I’m trying to emphasize the lowest commitment option with this one)

Write for the campus newspaper. Write about what women are doing - women’s sports, cool society activities, whatever. Review female movies, books, tv shows, local theatre productions. Write about sexism on campus. We need more female by-lines and more stories about women

Get involved with your campus’s sexual assault & r*pe hotline/sexual assault survivor’s centre/whatever similar organization your campus has if you can. This is hard work and definitely not for everyone (pls take care of yourself first, especially if you are a survivor)

(If your campus doesn’t have an organization for supporting survivor’s of sexualized violence, start one! This is probably going to be a lot of hard work though, so don’t do it alone)

Talk to your student council about providing free menstrual hygiene products on campus if your campus doesn’t already do this. If your campus provides free condoms (which they probs do), use that as leverage (ie. ‘sex is optional, menstruation is not. so why do we have free condoms and no free pads?’)

If you’re an older student, get involved with younger students (orientation week and such activities are good for this). Show the freshman that you can be a successful and well-liked woman without shaving your legs, wearing heels, wearing make-up, etc. Mentor these young women. Offer to go for coffee or proofread essays. 

Come to class looking like a human being. Be visibly make-up less, unshaven, unfeminine, etc. to show off the many different ways of being a woman

Talk to the custodial staff and learn their names. (I know there are men who work in this profession, but it is dominated by low-income women) Say hi in the hallways, ask them about their lives, show them they’re appreciated

Be explicit with your language. When you are talking about sex-based oppression, say it. Don’t say ‘sex worker’ when you mean survivor of human trafficking. This tip is obviously a bit tricky in terms of overt TERFyness, so use your best judgement

That’s all from me for now! Feel free to add your suggestions and remember that feminism is about action

[hamiltimebinches]

John Laurens x Reader: Flowering Affections Chapter 1

A/n: I really don’t know what to say here..... I really liked how this one turned out though. Chapter 2 is here.

Timeline: Modern

Warnings: None

Words: 1,496

     Perfection. We all know the word. Everybody wishes to be perfect: the perfect student, the perfect parent, perfect writer, perfect artist, even the perfect basketball player. They all strive to be perfect, and they all fail. When they fail most start to beat themselves up over it, when really there is nothing to be angry about. No one can be perfect, so why try so hard and be disappointed when you don’t achieve perfection? The most you can do for anything is to try your best. You can never be perfect, so why not be the best you can possibly attain. You may not be the perfect painter, but you do the best you can and that’s just fine. It’s okay to not be perfect at something, it’s okay to be just the best you can manage to be. I’m (Y/n) (L/n) and I’m not perfect, that’s just fine with me.

    But why all this talk of perfection? Is there a reason I’m telling you all this? No, not really. It’s just my flower thoughts. Flower thoughts? What are flower thoughts? Well, they’re sort of like shower thoughts. You all know how you get those life changing thoughts while sitting in the shower. Flower thoughts are also like those thoughts you get before you fall asleep, the ones that momentarily change your thinking before you drift off into your own sleepy paradise or nightmare. Flower thoughts occur when you are sitting in a meadow just playing with the flowers, or watching them, smelling them. Flower thoughts are the thoughts that come to you when you just kind of lose all your cares while admiring the flowers.

    I’m sorry, this probably is just confusing you. No one goes to meadows anymore. They’re all too busy inside working or just browsing the internet. They all are too concerned with the business of life to just take a step back and relax a bit in the warm summer air with a light breeze while they sit in a meadow. I’m not like that, not really. Sure, I get busy and get caught up in the commotion of life, but every now and then I like to just take a step back and admire life and think. Think about what? Think about anything of course.

    That’s how I got on the topic of perfection. I had noticed how worried I was about being perfect all the time then came to the realization that not one person can be perfect. Not me, not you, not my professors, not my parents, not my friends, not one person. That doesn’t stop us from thinking some people are perfect. That doesn’t stop me from thinking some people are perfect. Now though, I think of perfection in a different light. No one is truly perfect, but some people seem perfect to us, even when we take into account their flaws. We see someone as perfect, even though we realize they make mistakes just like us. Those people are perfect to us, even with their flaws, even if they aren’t perfect to everybody else. We can see friends and family as perfect, but more seriously we can see people we are attracted to as perfect in every way, even with their flaws they are perfect to us. There is even someone like that for me. That man’s name is John Laurens. To me, even with his flaws, he is perfect.

    John goes to the same college as me and is majoring in marine biology. I’m majoring as a psychiatrist. The only reason I met John was because we share the same Biology class. Technically I didn’t meet John in the classroom, I met him at the campus library. I had been doing research for a paper I need to have done by the end of two weeks. I had been stressing because the paper was counting as half of my grade for the quarter.

    I had been at the library to pick up some books I needed for the paper and then planned to work on the paper with my laptop at one of the tables, preferably one that would allow me to sit in the warm sunlight. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get two of the books because they were too high up for me to reach. John had been passing by as I once again stood as far up on my toes as I could. He saw me struggling and decided to come over and offer some help. I gladly accepted seeing that it would spare me some time. I know, cliche, right? But I guess some things in life just simply are cliche.

    Another cliche occured that same moment. John had asked if we had ever met before, I looked very familiar to him. I responded that I thought we shared the same class, even though I knew we did. I didn’t want him to think of me as weird and freaky for remembering him from a class of over fifty. So, I let him think I just vaguely remembered him. He had listed off the names of some of the professors he had but none of them matched with mine, until he mentioned Professor Bros. I’m not kidding, my Biology professor’s name is Professor Bros, that’s his actual last name. I had gotten a kick out of it when I saw his name. I had imagined him to be a more laid back teacher, I was wrong he was the strictest teacher I had and he didn’t take any bullshit from anyone. John and I conversed a little longer, totally not mentioning how much of a hardass Professor Bros was when it came to teaching and grading, before going our separate ways.

    Here I am, sitting in a meadow, and once again my thoughts have drifted off to John. more specifically when we met. My thoughts wandered from that occurence to what he is actually like, physically and personality wise.

    Physically John is, well, handsome. I don’t know how else to perfectly describe him. His skin tone is constantly tanned, as though he was working out in the sun constantly, which he probably was during his summers back in South Carolina. His eyes remind me of caramel and all his freckles remind me of constellations. Even though he comes from a hot and humid state and it’s not quite in fashion he’s grown his brown and curly hair out a little past his shoulders, he always has it tied back in a low ponytail. Sure, there’s plenty of men out there who have grown their hair out long, but a lot of them just don’t look good with long hair. John, however, is not one of those men.

    He is a bit on the loud side, especially when around friends, and very passionate about his beliefs. Unless someone gets on his nerves or the situation is serious he always seems to have a smile on his face. Back to the point about his beliefs, he will fight you if you say he’s wrong. He will fight you and tell you why he’s right and why you should shut your mouth, especially if what you said was racist. Don’t get me wrong though, John is not mean. He’s far from it actually. He’s kind and friendly. C’mon, he likes turtles, especially tiny baby ones. His friends, which I am now included as one, have literally seen him cry over a baby turtle he saw. In his words. “It’s just too cute and precious.”

    I let out a dreamy sigh as I wondered how I managed to even become friends with John. Why would he want to be friends with me? Why would he want to be seen around me? Those are two questions that always nag at me. Those questions always end up answered with cruel thoughts. Yeah, why? There’s nothing special about you. You’re just a nobody that comes from a little town in Florida that no one has ever even heard of. You’ve always been a nobody and you always will be.

    I sadly looked down at the flowers that were swaying in the light breeze. I focused on a dainty yellow tulip. Tulips have always been my favorite kind of flower, but not even seeing my favorite flowers can seem to lighten up my thoughts. I absentmindedly reached out and gently dragged my finger over the yellow and soft petal.

    I was startled out of my thoughts by a loud, abrasive ringing. I looked down at my lap to see my phone was the cause of the noise. Picking up the phone I looked for who was calling me. It was John. I felt a smile flicker across my lips. No matter how many times he’s called me I still get a giddy feeling and become happy to know he is calling me. I swiped my thumb over the answer button and lifted the phone to my ear.

    “Hello?”

[lindyhunt]

Why Are We so Obsessed With Cults Right Now?

As a child of the ’90s, I was first exposed to our collective train-wreck-like fascination with cults in the spring of 1997, when 39 members of Heaven’s Gate took their own lives in San Diego, believing it would get them onto an alien spacecraft. And growing up in Quebec, I’d often hear about the high-profile publicity stunts of Raelians, whose followers believe that life on earth was scientif­ically engineered by an extraterrestrial species named the Elohim. The free-love-minded Raelians would distribute condoms at the entrance to high schools, claim to have cloned the first full human being and organize internships that taught the fundamentals of a cosmic and orgasm-inducing meditation technique.

Having what’s arguably the world’s largest UFO-based religion in my own backyard—the Raelian movement set up its world embassy UFOland compound just outside Valcourt, Que.—made me wonder about the kinds of people who relinquish some of their critical-thinking faculties in the hopes of achieving a greater sense of purpose and belonging. Lawrence Wright, author of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, argues that all humans are vulnerable but cult adherents are particularly reliant on absolutes. “I’ve always been interested in religions and why people believe one idea rather than another,” he explains in the documentary based on his book. “I’ve studied Jonestown and radical Islam; there are often good-hearted people, idealistic but full of a kind of crushing certainty that eliminates doubt.”

“I’ve studied Jonestown and radical Islam; there are often good-hearted people, idealistic but full of a kind of crushing certainty that eliminates doubt.”

From the terrifying desert commune of the Manson Family to the spiritual rehabilitation of A-list celebs drawn to Scientology, pop culture has long been obsessed with the plight of those willing to blindly subscribe to a fringe ideology. And lately the topic of cults seems to be beckoning our attention at every turn, with Netflix’s much-talked-about true crime series Wild Wild Country, about the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; Hulu’s fictional cult drama The Path; “I Admit,” R. Kelly’s 19-minute R&B response to allegations that he ran a sex cult; and the impending high-profile trials of the members of NXIVM, another sex cult in upstate New York, now linked to Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman and Smallville actress Allison Mack. That’s without mentioning American Horror Story’s cult-themed seventh season and HBO’s Rapture-esque The Leftovers, which features Liv Tyler as part of a chain-smoking, blasé-looking all-white-clad cult known as the Guilty Remnant.

So why this sudden spike in cultish entertainment? Commenting on Wild Wild Country’s recent Emmy nods and broader cultural resonance, executive producer Mark Duplass told Deadline that he loves how viewers are able to identify with the series’s niche religious movement, given that “nobody in this country is identifying with anyone right now who doesn’t believe exactly as they do.” And he has a point. The rapid polarization of political discourse in the United States and also abroad is making people less inclined to feel any empathy for those with differing world views and more likely to retreat even further into their extremist enclaves.

The rapid polarization of political discourse in the United States and also abroad is making people less inclined to feel any empathy for those with differing world views and more likely to retreat even further into their extremist enclaves.

Take, for instance, the viral video of a New York City lawyer threatening to call immigration on employees and customers for speaking Spanish at a Fresh Kitchen. Or that of a Black Lives Matter Toronto organizer calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “white supremacist terrorist” at an anti-Islamophobia rally shortly after the Quebec City mosque attack. On the surface, these two news items couldn’t be more different: One shows an unwarranted tirade initiated by a racist client; the other, like-minded members of a community coming together to express their anger. Nevertheless, both seem symptomatic of what happens when people stop engaging in dialogue and resort to shouting matches. And, ultimately, could chanting mantras such as “Lock her up” at Republican rallies and gratuitously calling people out using immutable identity markers stand as modern iterations of cultlike behaviour? Wearing oversized capes and attending clandestine retreats in secluded forests might not be so popular in 2018, but punishing those whose perspectives are deemed heret­ical to a movement appears to be all the rage at both ends of the political spectrum.

Of course, the Trump cult is way scary. First and foremost because even fellow Republicans and the president’s own son seem to acknowledge he’s running a cult. Take Trump Jr.’s answer to Republican senator Bob Corker’s remark that the GOP is fast devolving into a cult: “If it’s a cult, it’s because they like what my father is doing.” When someone from Trump’s own party dares to contradict his version of reality—like when Senator Marco Rubio was chastised on Fox News for not following the president’s lead in recognizing the “talent” of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un—you have to wonder how many other party members are holding back for fear of being excommunicated. As a head of state, when your supporters and the media outright reject any interpretation of reality that contradicts what you’ve said, you have to congratulate yourself for taking a page out of the cult playbook.

As a head of state, when your supporters and the media outright reject any interpretation of reality that contradicts what you’ve said, you have to congratulate yourself for taking a page out of the cult playbook.

While in no way comparable to the fear mongering and sheer verbal (if not outright physical) violence of the alt-right, the damage being done at the other end of the spectrum can also be pernicious. While it’s entirely justified to ban hate speech targeting marginalized groups, it’s quite another to discourage people from expressing ideas considered uncomfortable or unresolved. The dangers of groupthink apply to the left as well, and it has contributed to making Trump’s ascent so spectacular.

When controversial speakers such as British polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos are prevented from speaking at public events (thereby shutting down the possibility of challenging their short-sighted world views), when trigger warnings are issued at Cambridge University to flag “potentially distressing topics” in Shakespeare’s plays and when British broadcaster Cathy Newman spends a half-hour trying to shame Toronto psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson for his impassioned contempt of postmodernism instead of unpacking what he actually says, you realize just how contained the algorithmic bubbles we live in can be.

“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive,” Peterson tells Newman when questioned about his right to offend. On that matter, I’m with him, as the opposite—censoring your ideas out of a fear that they may appear “divisive,” to borrow a word Newman repeatedly uses during the interview—might resemble something akin to The Handmaid’s Tale’s totalitarian Republic of Gilead.

Among the many markers of cultlike behaviour identified by the American Family Foundation, you’ll find leaders using guilt to control their members and an overarching “us versus them” mentality. Left- and right-wingers alike could be accused of such manipulative tactics. Peterson’s dismissal of anthropology and sociology classes as “indoctrination cults,” for instance, merely reinforces caricatures about left-wing activists instead of framing his critique in shades of grey. But it’s hard to rise above the current phenom of 24/7 preaching and online information cocoons, where followers chase enlightenment by binge-watching hours of content on YouTube or social media platforms that will conveniently validate their world views. That’s behind Peterson’s rapidly ascending popularity but also that of figureheads of much graver concern: conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars platform or even the sophisticated propaganda of ISIS—one of the most successful cults when it comes to online recruitment and self-radicalization.

It’s hard to rise above the current phenom of 24/7 preaching and online information cocoons, where followers chase enlightenment by binge-watching hours of content on YouTube or social media platforms that will conveniently validate their world views.

So what to make of our renewed interest in cults, and should we be concerned about the seemingly insurmountable divisions we face? I’m a firm believer in the power of the fifth estate to take gurus, spiritual leaders and assorted extremists to task on their most dubious claims. I’ll never forget when Rael—birth name Claude Vorilhon, self-described “gardener of our consciousness”—appeared on Quebec’s top-rated talk show Tout le monde en parle in 2004 with his topknot of hair to promote a Playboy spread featuring three topless females from his so-called Order of Angels.

The pull-no-punches TV panel picked apart the guru’s outlandish call to create a geniocracy as well as his boldfaced claim that he had used women’s wombs for cloning experiments. Once that TV appearance was over (it’s still regularly cited in media circles nearly 15 years later) and the man’s wonky assertions had been debunked, few people could claim with a straight face that they subscribed to Raelianism, and the movement eventually had to put its UFO compound up for sale. Think of it: A single entertainment talk show played a pivotal role in challenging the mind-manipulation techniques of a prominent international cult. I’m guessing that that media appearance didn’t help with its recruitment efforts.

As the first NXIVM trial gets underway and Trump continues to confound what many expect of world leaders in the 21st century, we have to remember to think critically about claims being made at either end of the political spectrum. In a world that seems like such a messy minefield, where the potential to be shamed or silenced for having an independent thought seems so great, we must remember to be courageous, speak up and, in the wise words of one great Canadian heartland rocker, keep on rockin’ in the free world.