#how can i Glass Ceiling Enforcer keep entertaining the idea that some jobs are for men and some are for women

[gender-euphowrya]

honestly i think the way transphobes are so attached to that "you'll never be a real ___" phrase is because the fact that sex/gender isn't some immovable unchanging fact that nothing could alter is a threat to sexism as a whole. which despite the claims of those who'd self-label as feminists, is exactly what transphobia is about upholding.

how can a society that says "men/males must be this way, women/females must be that way" have any credibility and keep functioning if it's possible to go from one side of it to another ?

the idea that cis women and cis men are almost separate species that can never resemble each other is the very foundation of sexism, so when we acknowledge that not only can the line between the two be crossed or blurred, and that there may not even be a line at all, it all crumbles down. not to mention acknowledging how billions of different human beings wouldn't realistically be classifiable in only 2 categories.

so witnessing us changing something that should, in their mind, always remain the same, and doing it so effectively that they sometimes can't tell us apart from them, that's making them seethe lmao

[howtohero]

#002 The Weird Factor

If you’re at all considering becoming a superhero it’s important to be aware of not only the changes that will occur in your own life, but also the changes that will occur in the world at large. See for a superhero to emerge in the world is a pretty big frikkin’ dealio, especially if you’re the first. Maybe not if you’re like the 347th, then it’s probably a smaller frikkin’ dealio. But still a frikkin’ dealio nonetheless. All it takes is for one superhuman do-gooder to roll up to the club for the whole world to lose its collective mind and take one giant leap towards the strange and paranormal. This is something I like to call: The Weird Factor.

Now, if you’re just going to go out and fight crime without first acquiring powers then this isn’t something you have to worry about much (also, maybe you’ll die). Usually when a costumed, powerless crime-fighter shows up nothing really changes. Maaaaybe you’ll get a few criminals taking up costumes and codenames too, but all that really means is that they’re going to start committing themed crimes based on their assumed identities. If anything, that just makes it easier to catch them. It’s not until someone starts shooting face lasers or being able to punch through the planet, that things get really crazy.

The appearance of a certified, straight-up, super powered individual in the public spotlight creates a domino effect when it comes to the appearance of other out of the normal creatures and events. A mainstream superhero starts a superhuman arms race (side note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t take the time to mention now that the appearance of a mainstream mystic starts a supernatural charms race). Criminals, now realizing that attaining super powers is within the realm of possibility, start trying to acquire superhuman abilities of their own. which leads to a market need for more heroes which generates more villains and so on and so forth. It’s really just basic economics, so think about that before you go out and start superheroing all over the place inspiring villains to take up arms against you!

Additionally, the acceptance of superhumans by the public will only embolden other irregular creatures to enter into mainstream society. It’s commonly assumed knowledge that vampires and werewolves and molemen and hyper-intelligent apes and sewer mutants and their ilk are hiding out somewhere in the world, (K, the sewer mutants are probably in the sewers but all the other ones!) but they remain in hiding out of fear that they won’t be accepted by the public. Which is totally reasonable. People are terrible. But, once a powerful individual shows up on the scene and is publicly adored and hailed as a hero, all of that fear will recede. Next thing you know the Loch Ness Monster will be holding a public press conference to accept her hide-and-seek-world-champion-even-though-Loch-Ness-isn’t-even-that-deep award and Bigfoot will be publishing a tell-all book titled “My Feet Aren’t Actually That Big I’m Actually Wearing Giant Novelty Slippers That I Found Once, They’re Mad Comfy and BTW My Real Name is Ned.” If you’re looking for a ghostwriter Ned, I’m your guy. Now, these creatures emerging and taking their rightful place in society is by no means a bad thing and should in fact by welcomed with open-arms (my editor wouldn’t let me make another magic pun here, but I wanted to). You just might want to touch base with some of these groups before you expose Paranormal People kind to the world, these aren’t the kinds of people you want being angry at you, ignoring the fact that you may or may not have already antagonized a village mystic in order to get your powers in the first place.

Once the world becomes full of superhuman heroes and villains and all stripes of Para-Folk, the planet will immediately become a lot more interesting. You’ll be putting Earth on the intergalactic map. That’s pretty neat! Or is it? I dunno! Let me lay out some scenarios for you and then let you decide.

Scenario 1: Earth becomes a legitimate intergalactic powerhouse. We’ve got an army of superheroes protecting it. Hyper-intelligent apes are walking around, probably holding public office. We’ve developed an international space fleet, it’s got a pretty boss insignia. Every spaceship has a bowling alley. That’s right you read that right. Earth has space bowling now. But oh now, what’s this? We’re seen as a threat. Other spacefaring races are intimidated by our space bowling and our ape congressman. They come and invade, preemptive strike-mas came early this year. That’s no fun at all. Though I guess it might inspire international unity but at what cost? People will doubtlessly die in this invasion. Plus, after (if?) it’s successfully seen off Earthlings will probably develop a sense of planetary nationalism (planetalism? planationalism?) and cut off all ties to other alien planets.

Scenario 2: Earth becomes the poster planet for intergalactic prosperity. Our superheroes are universally (literally) known and adored. Our acceptance of Para-Folk has received praise and has garnered the respect of the vampire nebula, sewer-mutant galactic empire, and the the werewolf colony living on one of Jupiter’s moons (did you know Jupiter has like 60 moons? Did you know that I had to say like and can’t give an exact number because apparently Jupiter keeps picking up satellites all the dang time? Science has just given up on even giving them real names! Sorry werewolves, hope you enjoy living on S/2003 J23). Earth is a major player in the intergalactic community, trade is established, alliances are formed. Our bowling alley space station becomes a revenue making tourist attraction for the entire solar system. Things are good. But then, uh oh what’s this? Surprise alien invasion! A war-like peace-hating, bowling-abhorring, alien race shows up and their war fleet has an even cooler insignia than ours. Devastation reigns, our allies come to our aid and the invasion is stopped but not before several lives are lost. 

Either way, once you become a public figure you can expect to see at least one alien invasion within your first few months. But but but if you successfully see off one of those invasions that’ll probably discourage other aliens from invading. So that’s good. Or the planet could be destroyed with all life exterminated. That would be lame. So, anyway, once you go public start gearing up for invasion. Good luck!

If fictional superheroes have managed to capture the public’s imagination and fancy one could only imagine what the appearance of a real life superhero would do to both the entertainment and scientific community. Confirmation of the existence of superhuman abilities would serve to break the glass ceiling on what is and isn’t considered physically possible and feasible (and sensible). Get ready (and get amped!) for hover boards and pet robot dinosaurs and time travel and teleportation and faster than light travel, and the return of iPhones with headphone jacks (you read it here first, this was my idea).

Once the seal of weird is broken though, anything that falls under the purview of The Weird Factor is entirely your responsibility not the local law enforcement’s. That’s just the way it is, beat cops aren’t paid enough to deal with rampaging cyborgs or giant sentient rock monsters. I mean, sure, granted, neither are you, but you have superpowers, so stop whining. Nuclear plant meltdown right next to a spider farm? That’s your problem. Super criminal with a freeze ray, that looks like a job for you. Alien invasion, I feel like we already covered this. Time-displaced dinosaur attack, that’s on you too, but on the bright side you live in a very cool town. 

          All of this (and more, I didn’t even get into the legal ramifications of this whole shebang) should be taken into consideration before you hope into your noun-mobile and start striking fear into the hearts of criminals everywhere. But they should be no means discourage you (just make sure the planet isn’t annihilated when the aliens come okay?) being a superhero is a huge responsibility but I’m sure, you, the person who came to tumblr to figure out how to go about doing it, are more than equipped to handle it. 

[96thdayofrage]

Incidents of domestic violence would go down, too—not necessarily because more abusers would get blasted, but because education begets confidence, which breeds independence and the strength to walk away. The fearless self-reliance incubated in women who were trained to be “educated self-protectors” would reverberate through society, smashing glass ceilings and counteracting the forces that turn women into nothing but objects of sex.

We’d feel it everywhere, says Lightfoot, as she pads around the dusty land near her home in Arizona. (“Gotta get those Fitbit steps in.”)

“We’re talking marketing,” she tells me. “Advertising, the entertainment industry. It would impact politics. You would get more confident women entering the ranks.”

Lightfoot, who is originally from Westchester, shot her first .22 seven years ago. Now she dedicates her life to the Well Armed Woman, a multi-pronged organization she founded to counteract the United States’ “testosterone-rich” gun culture. Through the Well Armed Woman, Lightfoot sells lacey concealed carry belly bands and slimming bike shorts with holsters sewn in. Her nonprofit, TWAW Shooting Chapters, extends across 49 states, its 280 gun clubs providing training, including NRA certification, to its members. And Lightfoot is a visible Second Amendment advocate, appearing regularly on TV. Juggling all of that is a lot. Her husband works for her, basically as her secretary.

“We have to push through our socialization, how we’re raised as girls,” she says, to turn into the kind of women who carry. Like others who get into guns later in life, she has a vulnerable memory she’s trying to flee. In her mid-40s, fresh out of an abusive relationship, a single mom watching her kids get ready to leave for college, she took a job in what she describes as a dangerous part of town. News stories of women attacked by rabid ex-boyfriends took on a darker edge. So Lightfoot asked some friends to take her shooting.

It was at times uncomfortable, breaking into such a male-dominated culture, she tells me. But it’s so worth it; it’s transformative, it changes the way a woman navigates the world—an analysis that Jane from Big Little Lies, with her handgun and her conviction that “just holding one in your hand has psychological benefits” for trauma survivors, would certainly support.

In the days following my conversation with Lightfoot, I’ll hear a parallel argument from Maj Toure, the founder of Black Guns Matter, a crowdfunded endeavor to bring gun safety, education, and Second Amendment activism to America’s black communities. “If I know exactly what this firearm does, and what its’ for,” he says, “I’m not disenfranchised, I don’t feel disconnected [from America]. And that confidence, it trickles up, it becomes cultural.”

In other words, gun ownership—the private, individual kind; no one is trying to stage an armed takeover here—gives agency to marginalized demographics. This conviction is shared by the Pink Pistols, a movement established in the early 2000s to end hate crimes against the LGBTQ community by arming them. “Playing the victim has won us sympathy, but at the cost of respect,” wrote Jonathan Rauch in Salon. “So let’s make gay-bashing dangerous.” The Pink Pistols surged in membership again in the wake of the Orlando shooting; a member spoke at a recent pro-Trump rally in Berkeley.

Toure partnered with them earlier this year, on tour in California. “We’re willing to work with anyone who’s about this,” he says.

“This,” being, among other things, the expansion of concealed carry and Stand Your Ground legislation, as well as the evolution of paranoid, self-defense-oriented gun culture into something that more accurately reflects the country’s makeup. As Toure told a group of black Boston residents this fall, the NRA and the Second Amendment aren’t just for the Bundys—they’re for you.

It’s an increasingly seductive idea: That carrying could equal the playing field in a society where older white men still own the most firearms by far, that armed queers don’t get bashed, that one of the answers to systematic oppression is to fight fire with literal fire—and, more importantly, that the laws protecting such gun owners would be equally applied. People who rolled their eyes at the post-Obama gun grab are now, in Trump’s America, arming themselves. And no wonder, when coalitions of neo-Nazis and right-wing militiamen are donning helmets and marching in Berkeley. Maybe, to use one of the gun lobby’s favorite cliches, an armed society really could be pummeled into being more polite.

But it’s nearly impossible to talk about lethal self-defense in America without talking about that gun lobby, which has shaped how guns are wielded, legislated, and imagined in our country—or the lopsided, insidious ways in which gun laws are enforced, as in the cases of Marissa Alexander and Philando Castile or the countless others like them who were either arrested or murdered when they reached for their licensed gun.

Over the last decade the NRA has pushed the Stand Your Ground legislation that is now in effect in more than 20 states, building support through political donations and publicity campaigns that frame every civilian as a would-be attacker. If you’re a Second Amendment advocate in America, collaboration with the NRA is nearly inevitable; both Lightfoot and Toure have touched parts of its vast media wing.

This dream of individual, firearm-mediated agency is one the NRA has fueled in its decades-long campaign for looser gun laws. Once a sporting organization, it has come to rewrite the Second Amendment: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms” is embossed in golden script in the lobby of its DC headquarters, while the slipperier “well-regulated militia” bit has been edited out. This ideology is distilled in its “Don’t be a victim” and “We Don’t Call 911” posters, and in the ad campaigns focused on nebulous, lurking threats.

A few years ago Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist, spent a few years in Minnesota talking to gun owners in a book-length attempt to understand the effects of expanded concealed carry laws. She opens the book with a white guy who keeps a shotgun under his grocery counter and a black man who describes himself as a role model for his ability to self-police.

Their reasons for carrying a gun were rooted in a fundamental sense of American decline, in a distrust in government, wrote Carlson—and, she argued, had been largely shaped in NRA training courses emphasizing “transformation” and “empowerment.” A “major, but overlooked accomplishment of the NRA,” she concluded, has been to promote a version of citizenship from the ground up: the “citizen-protector” stepping in to secure order where the state can or will not. “In fulfilling what they see as a duty, gun carriers do not just respond to the threat of crime—they reclaim a sense of dignity.”

Who actually gets to stand their ground, and under what conditions?