#education is a privilege education is privilege

[so-i-did-this-thing]

You're the only person I know on Tumblr who I feel like I can send this ask so I hope this is ok.

I'm absolutely sick to my stomach terrified. People keep talking about not acquiescing early and to keep fighting and that's good but... I'm a trans person married to a trans person and we have a kid. We are so, so scared that we are going to lose our parental rights and have him taken away, even if he's biologically my partners. We are pretty fucking sure that the only way we could even possibly stay in the US and even possibly keep our family together is to detransition. But then we would still be queer, and I remember the 90s and how it was pretty recent that gay couples were considered unfit parents.

And this isn't us blowing things out of proportion, we have an education in politics so we've got a pretty good freaking idea about how bad things can and will get, but also we don't feel like we can afford to NOT take things extremely seriously. The worst case scenario is pretty horrific for us, so we've talked at lengthe about leaving the country. Which is it's own basket of heartbreaks because then there's a real chance we will never be able to come back. And I don't really feel like I can talk about it because a) the Internet doesn't feel safe to be trans on and b) there's been SO much chatter about how we need to stay and fight and people who can leave are privileged etc etc

I just... I'm scared and heartbroken and angry and I feel extremely hopeless. I guess I don't really have a question after all. I just needed to talk about it because it feels like not enough people are seeing this kind of true tragedy that could come from all this.

I wish there was actual help we could get. But there doesn't seem like there's anyone who can.

You're right, Anon - you're not blowing things out of proportion.

I want to say that I'm relieved in a sense that you are talking about where your lines in the sand are are and what you plan to do if they are crossed. There is hope and comfort to be found in a plan, even if it is a plan for the next generation's survival, instead of our own.

Every trans person needs to start thinking about real answers to the following questions:

What will I do if I'm fired tomorrow?

What will I do if I'm denied a loan? Housing?

What will I do if I lose my HRT?

What will I do if information about trans people is considered illegal to circulate?

What will I do if I I'm declared an unfit parent?

What will I do if my marriage is annulled?

What will I do if I'm declared unfit to own my own property or make my own legal decisions?

What will I do if I'm about to be arrested?

There are answers to all of these questions that aren't just "give up and die." But there's no one-size-fits all solution. People will have varying priorities based on how they see their role in fighting fascism and what resources they have access to.

Community is going to become incredibly important. Trans people have always existed. Sympathetic cis people have always existed. Trans people have always found ways to survive and even flourish, even though it often meant not being able to pursue their original dreams.

If you don't know where to begin with strengthening our community, the Trans Literature Preservation Project is a good place to get ideas. The virtual book burnings have already begun on .gov websites, so maybe doing a little preservation work will give you more hope that you're working to make a difference.

Because the work is important, even if the progress won't happen until after our time.

[librarycards]

it has been interesting seeing the tides turn back from people criticizing the education system to making fun of individuals for lacking knowledge (eg. the meme like "actually, they told us about the scramble for Africa in hs, but you were too busy doodling.") have you noticed this too/ any thoughts?

i think that those points aren't very kind, but are in many ways not only correct but expressing rightful frustration at (mostly white) students' selective memory for historical events/general knowledge, contingent upon whether or not they believe said information applies to them. like, i'd wager the average high school aged kid in africa probably has more knowledge of the scramble for africa (though they may not know it in normative u.s. textbook terms) than many u.s. students, despite a nominally more "developed" educational system. why? bc when you're living in a multiply-colonized society facing the material impacts of said ongoing colonialism every day....this shit is not avoidable. you know it whether you want to or not. meanwhile, many of those living in the imperial core - at least for now - can literally and figuratively tune out the violent realities that they (we) are party to + beneficiaries of. in a choice between being razzed for not paying attention in school, and having my community razed, enslaved, and stripped of resources in order to satisfy colonial greed....well, i'm gonna taking the razzing any day, even if it seems mean.

i also think the age dynamics here are worth noting: people say this to each other from adult to adult, typically because the ignorant adult claims that the u.s. educational system alone is at fault for their lack of knowledge (always concentrated around issues of empire and white supremacy and, curiously, never about the fandom they happen to be obsessed with....). except...no. because they're adults with an internet connection - the accusation that they were "doodling in history class" is a gesture at a broader set of decisions to remain ignorant & incurious long after history class/high school has ended. maybe your school taught you about the scramble for africa (most likely it was at least mentioned) and maybe not. but in a conversation between adults on a global internet, with free resources only keystrokes away (and in many cases bundled and handed to us by public scholars) the choice to "keep doodling" is an active one and a political one, and the blame rests on the shoulders of the privileged who refuse to learn about empire's "Others".

[servantofthefates]

I have a huge problem with the Law of Attraction.

I use the term Law of Attraction a lot, because it’s the easiest way for me to convey to English speakers what I’m talking about.

But the law of attraction I believe in is not the same as the oversimplified version that the Western world is obsessed with.

According to them, our emotions dictate what we create. Whether good or bad, whatever happens in our life is something our emotions consciously or unconsciously made.

What then of children who were molested? Did their emotions somehow make that tragedy possible? What of people who were brutally violated and killed? Were they secretly wishing for it?

Their version, tied to the New Thought movement, only works for privileged people. Those who cannot even afford three meals a day cannot simply believe in their dreams, for the skies to open up and shower them with a college education and a brand-new Tesla.

This movement’s Bible, The Secret, also demands that you feel and stay happy every second of every day, because the world needs your joy. So how about someone who just got run over by a bus? Or somebody who was just diagnosed with a terminal illness? Should they smile 24/7 too?

To convey the version of the Law of Attraction that I believe in, I must share another philosophy from another part of the world.

Chinese metaphysics says there are three kinds of luck: heaven luck, earth luck and human luck.

Heaven luck is your fate. Your destiny. What the gods have planned for you, or what your soul agreed to accomplish in this life. It cannot be changed… for the most part. Earth luck is your environment. Whether the place you’re in is conducive for who you want to be. Is your home a sanctuary or a battlefield? Are you in the right job or not? Do the people around you support or belittle you? Human luck is your actions. Your choices. This is where my law of attraction comes in. Do you speak kindly to yourself? Do you think as positively as you can? Do you believe with every fiber of your being that you can achieve your dreams?

Your human luck is in your hands. It is how you manifest. It is how you lead a life that makes your younger self proud and your older self grateful.

But when shit happens, you mustn’t blame yourself. If a malicious person harms you, or if tragedy strikes out of the blue... that’s not your fault.

You did not attract that. You did not make that happen. You did not create your own pain. That is a result of the other two kinds of luck just doing their thing. That's life. Even Mother Earth knows it can't be summer all year long.

However, when you actively and consistently try to strengthen your human luck, it can influence your heaven luck and earth luck too. They could bend to your will if you can convince them. That is the law of attraction I believe in and speak about.

It's a long journey for us to be able to make that happen. So if you cannot do it just yet… go easy on yourself.

Keep trying. You'll get there.

[summertimesadnessirl]

I did get my shit together. Like 4 times.

Every time I get my shit together someone else comes along and fucks up my shit.

I'm not going to get my shit together again unless I get to

1. Find everyone who ever did that to me and charge them $500,000 over a period of 4 years in evenly distributed chunks which pay out on the first of each month via direct deposit.

2. Recieve a public apology from Chappell Roan which mentions me by name and explains what she did and who put her up to it, full legal rights to all her songs and merch and all profit from them, and a legally binding contract from her that she will dye her hair a color other than red and never be photographed in public with red hair or brown lipstick ever again. I will them use the money to contract deleteme.com to scrub all reference to her from the entire internet forever.

3. My mother, Gale Tousignant, is placed on house arrest on an ankle bracelet and is not allowed to be around children in the future.

4. The government creates a committee for the investigation of munchausen by proxy of psychiatrist that investigates the psychiatric community.

5. Churches are required to pay taxes on tithes and on any income from owning businesses and real estate.

6. The US government decriminalizes and supports the sale of drug safety tests for drug users.

7. All laws against pornography are repealed.

8. All citizens over the age of 18 are entitled to any form of birth control including condoms and abortion for free.

9. All minor children are given a ubi

10. Men who pay child support have their payment amount automatically adjusted based on their withholding amount.

11. People under the age of 26 automatically qualify for food stamps

12. University education is free for everyone

13. 25 dollar an hour minimum wage

14. Strict labor laws are made on the entire usa to prevent abusive scheduling practices at hourly wage jobs.

15. The labor board does an investigation into coercion to quit or incitement to make mistakes with the intention of creating a fake paper trail to fire people in jobs as a form of discrimination or retaliation

16. Unemployment is the same rate as whatever someone was paid at and it lasts 99 weeks for any adult after a layoff

17. The government regulates the job application process to prevent ghost jobs, require a set salary or hourly wage be written in the add and not a range, and make job interviews illegal (literally illegal, if someone's skills and references check out you don't need to subject them to a test based on subconscious biases and privilege.)

18. Capital gains tax

19. The government will limit the number of rental properties someone can own to 3, and the number of single family homes someone can own to 3.

20. Immediate dissolution of laws that prevent people with yards from using them to grow vegetables or farm chickens

21. Government program that reimburses the full cost of putting solar panels on any building.

22. Government program that requires any business which owns more than 4 locations with a flat roof or makes more than 1 billion annually to put solar panels on the roofs of all their buildings.

23. Government buyback program of power people don't use from their solar panels.

24. No fault divorce is not to be touched.

26. An organization designs an app that allows any citizen to make a living will, a will, prenuptial agreement, model release for use on social media, or a contract to be used which which is designed to be something like a prenuptial agreement for roommates to protect them with splitting bills and lease and so on, with common situations to create boilerplate style more or less correct documents that can be witnessed by an attorney or verified by a notary public and signed. A good faith effort is used to allow the app to make suggestions and help with common disputes and legal situations people have in these cases in the way that a real attorney would, so that even though the contracts can still be challenged and can't demand either party to break the law, the average person can create documents that help them with these situations effectively.

27. When a generic product is produced in the same factory as a more expensive name brand product using the same ingredient, a law requires a specific label on the front which makes it easy for consumers to identify in grocery stores.

28. A team of forensic accountants is hired to testify before congress every year on live TV explaining how tax planning works to take advantage of loopholes.

30. An awareness campaign about sexual abuse from women against women, including "enforced modesty" as abuse and grooming

31. The tax on inheritance is immediately tripled.

32. A bot net is created to link statistics about nepotism and inherited wealth and class mobility on any hint of meritocracy propaganda online.

33. EL James is sued for damages and loses all profits from the sale of her work for grooming and entrapment of women in financially abusive relationships.

Idk. I still think I just wanna die.

[yesornopolls]

is education a privilege?

[aaandbackstabbed]

Tell me why the run up to mock exam week is actually kicking me so hard in the arse?!!

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[empireofthestates]

What You Need to Know about Project 2025

The GOP's Radical Plans for America's Future

graphics from @/pinballwizardess on tiktok

[relaxedstyles]

[theabigailthorn]

You're not uniquely talented or hard working you just went to the right schools.

Yes, yes! This is exactly why I started Philosophy Tube! Why shouldn't someone else, anyone else, have access to the education I got??? The intellectual and cultural heritage of our species is for everyone, not just privileged people like me! :)

[shameeater]

SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE GENERAL STRIKE

This is a decentralized mass strike that anyone can be apart of in various ways.

Community and organization strengthens every movement.

We need a LOT of movement and considering a LOT of the general population is angry about what's happening, it's NEVER TOO LATE to join your local and state-wide community

Even if you are flooded with work to survive, fatigued, and/or disabled, which, due to fascism, most are these days.

LGBTQA+ spoonies of color and especially able and privileged allies, we gotta make shit move, make noise, spread education and info.

This shit's happened before -- we can unite again and unmake this foul history.

join the discord for more info

I am not a mod or a founder, just fed up!

(Reminder that this is an 18+ account to NOT scroll+follow if you are under 18+ or do not want to see NSFW)

I cannot stress enough to you that all American government agencies are falling apart at the seams right now and they will not be put back together for the foreseeable future. EPA DHS ED VA FDA NIH IRS CDC HHS NPS etc... Elon Musk is dismantling everything. Anyone who resigns or is laid off now, the word we (I am an agency employee) are receiving internally is that their position will be abolished, not backfilled.

Do you like eating clean, safe food?

Do you like having clean, safe air and water?

Do you want experts monitoring developing infectious diseases?

Do you like getting tax returns?

Do you want your children to have free, quality, public education?

If so, you need to write to your senators and representatives RIGHT NOW. Trump is not obeying the rule of law. He is illegally firing all the inspectors general of these agencies (they are literally being escorted by security out of their offices) so that there is no one left to stop him from doing quite literally anything he wants. He has bypassed the internal structure of all of the agencies by plugging in external email servers to push typo-filled emails and memos written by employees of the heritage foundation directly into the inbox of every federal agency employee in the country, threatening to terminate them.

The rule of law is dead. The only mechanism left to stop any of this is mass public outcry via convincing your state's congressmen & women to do something, because right now they are staying absolutely silent and none of us in these agencies can figure out why. A massacre is happening right now and every single American will feel the material, concrete consequences of this in their daily lives very soon if nothing is done.

Please help me boost this information.

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[sunbeamedskies]

It is a PRIVILEGE to be able to say that the entire population of a country or region are inherently guilty and deserving of death. It is also exactly the same shit the alt right does.

I've seen people do this to both Palestine and Israel. If you honestly celebrate the murder of Palestinians or Israelis and try to justify it, you are no better than an alt right cult member.

Real people are dying and suffering while you pretend this is a video game.

[serpentface]

reading all about the white calf, love your work, can i just say. gonna put some hibrides appreciation out there because damn. nobody in this story is lucky but she in particular seems to be having a Bad Time

Yeah a lot of things suck pretty bad for her. Unwittingly in a lavender marriage, mutual dislike between her and her dogshit husband, extremely strained relationship to her former best friend/gay quasi-boyfriend/father of her children who alternates between avoiding her and desperate attempts to make her love him again, having to constantly maintain multiple levels of facade to socially protect their throuple and therefore herself, shy and socially isolated, dealing with trauma that she doesn't even begin to recognize as such because 'nothing bad actually happened', pretty sure something is deeply wrong with her, living under a damocles sword of catastrophic social consequences should her children be exposed as bastards, has discovered an unexpected and mostly unwanted pregnancy while on a months long cross-country trek, etc.

She's also someone who prides herself in being rational, put together, stoic against adversity, and not overly emotional and weak, which basically means all of this is getting suppressed and compartmentalized away like crazy.

She HAS managed to fall into a rhythm with it all and her life IS NOT constant misery and agony. But the situation she's in for the duration of the story completely tears her out of this rhythm and makes all these factors very acute (though also opens her up to new opportunities, new and more positive/differently complex relationships, and much bigger things to worry about than her domestic life).

Unrelated drawing of her struggling not to lose her shit in public (in this case trying not to laugh)

[go-aywey]

Any pain I get during periods I simply attribute it to men being evil.

Disease is prevalent in humans, it’s not some “curse”. Through science and technology we’ve cured and wiped some diseases out, or at least invented some form of ongoing treatment.

Any uterus-related pain and diseases should’ve been cured or easily managed by now thanks to science, but men are so evil they barred humanity and women not just from studying our own bodies and health, but from studying bodies at all due to them rarely submitting themselves for examination, despite having the privileges of access to education and literally everything centered around them.

In fact, the only reason we know as much as we do about female health today is through classic male brutality and evil, violations of boundaries and consent, murder and bloodshed. Two evil systems men created intersected in the case of Henrietta Lacks; the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and misogyny.

as part of trying to have a better relationship with my body I'm trying to not think of the uterus as evil like this:

but rather as trying it's best while being a bit useless, like this:

[queen-helmaroc]

working hard because fuck you

the past couple of years have been so draining. i really just want to give up and say fuck college. it feels so pointless when the country (im in the us) is going to shit,

BUT THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT!

if you are in school right now, try your best not to give up.

if you are capable, do your best to finish your education.

the reason im saying this is not to tell you how successful you can be or how much money you can make or what a great job you will get.

the government does not want us to be educated. it is easier to manipulate and control uneducated people.

i have had to drastically change my mindset because of this. im not working to get the best grades or be the top of my class (if you can do that, please go for it!! just not possible for me). im simply trying to get my education, learn critical thinking skills, learn fact checking, etc.

im working hard now because fuck the government. and if spite is what i have to use in order to get my education, then fine. im doing it out of spite.

also, while i absolutely believe education should be free and every should have the opportunity, this is not reality. i am privileged to attend university, and im going to take advantage of it.

JOIN PROTESTS, HELP YOUR COMMUNITY.

IF YOU ARE IN UNIVERSITY RIGHT NOW, DONT GIVE UP!!

EDUCATE OTHERS! WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER!

lets get educated and make a fucking scene about it.