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moonlayl · 3 years ago

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In relation to the #StopAsianHate tag, it seems fitting to add this contribution since China has been doing a lot of horribly questionable things(to put it mildly), and this has led to a rise in anti-asian rhetoric, with extras on the anti-chinese rhetoric.

It has affected overseas Chinese-descendants and the Chinese diaspora around the world badly, since they had no hand in what China did, nor do they share the same sentiments of China, yet they still get harassed and targeted. Even to the point of cop agents admit to accusing a Canadian professor of Chinese descent of being a spy, Hongkongnese coworkers mistreating overseas Chinese not from China, and a British-born Asian man getting deported without question.

So in lieu of letting this storm rage over even more, the better option appears to be to address everyone's concerns and assumptions about people of Chinese descent who are citizens since birth in other countries and have never set foot in china before.

The main point is: NOT ALL CHINESE AROUND THE WORLD ARE WUMAO COMMUNISTS, NOT ALL CHINESE DESCENDANTS SHARE THE SAME SENTIMENTS AS CHINA OR DOING THINGS FOR CHINA. Got it?

Now, to move on to the other part of attacks on Chinese culture and shaming people just for being Chinese.

1.It is okay to be Chinese-born; there is nothing wrong that you happen to be a Chinese person. You deserve dignity, pursuit of happiness, liberty and respect, just like any other race of person, black, white, Jew, etc out there. You are a person too and don't let anyone treat you otherwise.

2.Chinese people are not "spawn of the bad" or "corrupted subhuman" or "tainted genome"; they are not inherently rotten just by being of Chinese descrnt. There is no proof of that, when you pick apart gene sequences from a Chinese descendant in the clinic, it's still very similar to any other person's dna. Just like every nationality, there's kind people and there's assholes. And just like most other countries, who also had monarchy inbreeding, illness, and radiation(did you know of the Radium Girls in the 1920s, or the very unsafe nuclear testing in the 50s to 90s? They even used to put Radium in wristwatches for citizens to glow in the dark so casually.), the Chinese are no different. Just like to bring up the good parts of others' history rather than focus on the bad so much like china.

3.Chinese history, philosophy and culture does not have all bad parts. Please read and analyze everything, good and bad parts, if you want to make a proper judgement. It is very shocking to hear everyone at this point, so comfortable with joking: "let's nuke the Chinese" or "hope we bomb china badly if there's a war" or "the British and Japanese were good to wipe out the Chinese first" so casually! It is not a fair sentiment nor anti-racist one. If it's wrong to say: "the native Americans should have gotten rid of the arriving pilgrims because they were gonna genocide them anyways so might as well" or "black people should be allowed to hurt white people now for all they've done" then statements of that nature against Chinese is also wrong.

And just like other nations who came before and around the same time, these other nations also had bad parts of their culture. No one seems to highlight how colonizers used to practice Safari Game Hunting in Africa for centuries which killed a lot of animals leaving endangered species, no one talks about the quack and irrational remedies doctors in medieval Ages used to do, how they used to mix arsenic in paint on toys in Victorian era, European wars against indigenous peoples, as much as they keep on bringing up Chinese history's weak points and irrationally using it as a weapon to hold against Chinese people irrelevant to the cause of their past generations for years. It is unfair to whitewash your history while scorning the Chinese people's past.

Some Chinese clothing is nice. Some Chinese food is delicious. Some Chinese architecture can be very beautiful. Some Chinese inventions are useful. Those are the good points of Chinese culture. Not everything is tainted.

4.Not all Chinese are ugly. Or yellow skinned. Or receded jawed. Some have hooded eyes, some have high cheekbones, bigger mouths, wonky noses naturally too. Please look at every Chinese person without plastic surgery and analyze the whole populations faces, before you pass a half-assed judgement of how "ugly" they are in general! Seriously, if not how can you make a proper judgement?

5.As for other Asians who are non-Chinese, please stop trying to compare your cultures against theirs, treat it like a contest and say which one is the 'better Asian' to the people of the Occident(white). It is not cool nor necessary. Just do your thing go brighten your own little corner and you'll be great. Not every wumao is stealing your culture all the time sometimes cultures and trads just overlap or happen to be similar or shared through separation and migration reasons. Yes, you are a different non-chinese Asian and unique, there's no need to make noise or insult Chinese people just to prove your point too.

6.Overseas Chinese had ancestors who suffered too hence their migration and diaspora. Read about the Nanking Massacre, their Opium Addiction, 731 labs, Mao's rule, and other conditions. A lot didn't migrate for fun and games.

This is not dedicated to defending China's misdeeds or the Wumao, this is dedicated to the OVERSEAS people of Chinese descent, the Southeast Asian Chinese, the Chinese diaspora in the west, and anyone who didn't ask to be born with Chinese genes or ancestry but got it anyway: it's not your fault. Don't let yourself be shamed for being born this way, even when it's 'cool' to make fun of Chinese, and find a little pride in yourself. Take care and look out for yourself. There may be 1.4 billion mainland Chinese(even with the birth control policies), but there are many more overseas Chinese who need to be understood as "overseas people of Chinese descent" and respected as such.

For those who are non-chinese reading this, please think carefully anytime you want to post something, is it attacking only the current leaders in china or also targeting Chinese people or overseas Chinese-descent peoples too, before you become the very bigot you hate against a group of people or do a hate crime you might regret. Take a moment, and calm down.

Whoever needs to see this, glad you seen it, even if you need it translated. If you can tag it that would be helpful as well.

#^^^^#important #to make it clear: I am NEVER referring to the people when i criticize a government or nation #unless I explicitly say so #stop asian hate #stop asian violence #china #racism

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amphxtrite · 3 years ago

Note

The main point is: NOT ALL CHINESE AROUND THE WORLD ARE WUMAO COMMUNISTS, NOT ALL CHINESE DESCENDANTS SHARE THE SAME SENTIMENTS AS CHINA OR DOING THINGS FOR CHINA. Got it?

Now, to move on to the other part of attacks on Chinese culture and shaming people just for being Chinese.

Whoever needs to see this, glad you seen it, even if you need it translated. If you can tag it that would be helpful as well.

this right here 👏👏👏

i hope everyone remembers that it’s not all chinese people who are supporting the unjust things the government is doing. China in general is a very patriotic country and so when given the choice to believe something bad is happening or believing what they have been taught their entire lives (china is great and the best country in the world) they are going side with the statement that has been drilled into their heads since they were children. Chinese people aren’t ignorant they really just don’t know, every news outlet and media platform they use backs up the point that China is the best and they know if they step one toe out of line China is very powerful.

This is the government and the people of power’s doing and it doesn’t matter what the people think. The people either don’t know or don’t understand and it’s fry oho we many people repeatedly blame China as a whole for just a small part of it’s country’s doing.

What’s going on there is absolutely a violation of basic human rights and terrible but please take a moment to remember half the people don’t even know what is happening outside or inside their country because of how controlling everything is there.

Next, because everything there is decided by the government chinese immigrants have NO control over what happens there heck the people in china barely do. So the hate crimes in the west make no. fucking. sense. You’re not going to reach china by attacking u.a or canadian citizens you’re just adding to unnecessary violence. Elderly people, adults and children of north american citizenship are assaulted, harassed and bullied for somethings they cannot control and it’s terrifying how normalized the hate has become.

To all the chinese people seeing this stay strong, there’s no reason to be ashamed of where you or your family is from or how you look.

This anon put it best 🤍🤍

#stop asian violence #stop asian hate #lovely anon

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the-scooby-gang · 5 years ago

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The school body of Coolsville High valorised their lives. That’s why any thought they had on the Heathers was said outside the school grounds. Far away from The Red Heathers ears and listeners . Not that helps any. They somehow still know of your slight agains them, there being one or not.

One of the topics whispered between the walls of the malt shop was a highly debated one: The Red Heathers didn't deserve a friend like Norville Heather Rogers

Fiercely loyal and surprisingly friendly, seen who his best friends were, Norville “Like, call me Shaggy” Rogers didn't have any of the characteristics of someone everyone assumed would mingle with Fred and Daphne. In fact, when he had first arrived on the school, freshly transferred from some place in California, with a historic of anxiety and panic attacks, many pitied him.

“Poor Kid” they said “The Heathers will ate him alive”

“How long do you think it will take for him to cry?”

“I give him a week”

“You are being optimistic. By lunch time, one of the traps will traumatise him beyond words. I give two days before he asks for a new transference”

But it never came to be.

No one is quite sure what Fred Jones saw in the new kid, but the attack on the easy target never came. Instead, both Daphne and Fred sat down with him at lunch. Made conversation, asked to show him around. Becoming... friends.

For many weeks, everyone held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the lanky kid to appear glued to the flagpole, without his pants, in tears.

But the days passed and no nefarious deeds were committed against one Shaggy Rogers.

Many were confused.

Why?

The Heathers never made, what Daphne use to call, ‘Bad investments’ in regards of who they hang around with. What, exactly, tall, lanky Shaggy Rogers could offer to them, outside having the middle name Heather?

Some theorised it was because his family was loaded, they sell engagement rings after all.

Some said that they wanted to capitalise on the fact that, anxiety aside, he was the lead in the track team and was one one the best gymnast of Coolsville (with was a terrifying notion: someone with such physical prowess under Daphne and Fred’s command would have no problem climbing walls and roofs and planting god knows what kind of trap in there. Out of sight, out of reach)

Some thought it was because of the Giant Great Dane that followed the boy around. A service dog, Scooby Doo was as fiercely loyal as Shaggy himself and when, rarely, he wasn't with his owner, you could see the dog casually trotting side by side with the King or the Queen.

Having a dog the size of a small pony just added to their image of “Don't fuck with us.”

But the truth appeared one month later.

Already stablished as “A Heather”, Shaggy had developed a new found confidence. With his posture straight and a new fondness for yellow.

(”Like, Daph, you and Freddie have, like, your color. And since green is already taken I was thinking, I don't know, yellow?? What do you think?”

“That’s a marvellous idea, Shaggy! You know what? We should go shopping after class, so I can help you”

“Thanks, Daph”

“Don't sweat over it, sweetie. That’s is what friends are for”)

Shaggy Rogers and Scooby were just walking down the hallway. Radiating friendliness as per usual. Until they weren't.

No one remember their names. The only thing everyone remembers about them was that they were both new transfer students. A tall blond cheerleader wannabe and a small jock.

They were new, poor things. They didn't know about the status quo. They didn't know to bend the knee to the King and Queen. For any new arrivals, the way how the school worked was shoved down their throats by the ever looming presence of the Heathers power, but during Shaggy “initiation” as one of them they had been quiet. Non-threatening. Normal teens even.

With had put the school in a state of unease.

But the fools, unimaginably tremendous fools, didn't see it. The warning on the faces of their fellow students that something was not right. They were new, and as such didn't know the rule they were about to break.

They insulted Daphne.

A comment on her blazer. The way she made her hair. How all the red mixed with her hair makes her look like a giant tomato. How that shade of lipstick made she look like a slut....

The Red Heathers had not yet arrived, but the students on the hearing radium on the conversation freeze. They may not be here, but they will know.

They always know.

The foolish idiots keep on laughing, not noticing that the entire hallway is now deadly quiet. Picturing their coffins most likely. No one notices Shaggy smile disappear or see the boy approach the laughing duo.

Shaggy’s first against the locker, barely missing the jock, wreaked that spell.

“You will watch that dirty. whore. mouth of yours when talking about my friend, or I will personally sew it shut”

He had barely whispered, but on the silence corridor it sound like a shout. They did a double take. Some gave a triple take just to be sure. The Shaggy they have come to know barely swore, much less threaten someone.

But this was not Shaggy. The man in yellow is now unrecognisable from Shaggy and his cheerful eyes.

His eyes were now cold and piercing. He stood tall, smirking gleefully when noticing that his 6,7f frame loomed over his targets. Even the energy around him seemed to change. Friendliness stepped aside to be replaced by Fear.

This was also a common topic in the relative safety of the malt shop: How reality seemed slightly distorted depending how Shaggy was felling that day. Some kids went as far as say that maybe that's was why Fred and Daphne became his friends. His reality bending powers must have made it so, they say, thats why when he is being friendly, we feel joyful in his presence, they say. That when he is mad, you are bombarded by fear.

The cheerleader was paralysed. She was plastered against her locker, trying to look as small and as unthreatening as possible. Her jock friend, however, in a moment of panic maybe, tried to punch his way out of the situation. Just for Shaggy to dodge the first like it was nothing. In a fraction of a second he grabbed the wrist of his smaller target and twisted his arm behind his back, shoving him face first against the locker.

“When I talk to you, I want a verbal answer. Or are you too stupid to figure that out?” Shaggy now demanded, his voice level, but not less frigid. “Now, where was I... Oh, yes. You and Misses failed abortion face here were laughing about my friend, wasn't it?” he asked, turning his face to look at the cowering girl, who was doing her damnedest to fuse herself with the metal, but still keeping her friend pined against the lockers like a misbehaving portrait.

“You,” Shaggy said, glaring at the girl so intensely they expected her to die by its force alone “Daphne warned me about people like you.” He turned his face back to the jock with a look of disgust before effortlessly throwing him over her lake a sad sack of potatoes “She told me about the slander. About the jokes behind her and Fred’s back. How pathetic little sacks like you two have your life mission to make them miserable” with each word Rogers was getting more frigid, if that's was even possible, while everyone else looked in disbelieve when the pieces of the plan laid right in front of them, finally clear.

“You. absolute. pieces. of. jealous. shit can't see someone that seems slightly better than you that you want to drag them all over the mud isn't it?” he was shaking right now. Scoob, that had been by his side the entire ordeal, got closer to his owner. A silent support. “Just because they are rich, you think their life is a barrel of rainbows, that they don't suffer at all. That you can say your mean words all you want that Perfect and Rich Daphne and Fred will be unaffected”

His voice was breaking, he was clearly on the verge of tears. But if you looked at his face alone, you would think it was made of stone. Scooby at that point, cleaver boy that he was, accessed the situation and started to growl at the two dumbfound pair on the ground, clearly deducing that they were the cause of his friends distress. Both pressed themselves harder against the wall, now with a pissed Great Dane looming over them

“So guess what? They may be more forgiving than any of you disgusting toads deserve, but while I'm still fucking breathing no one, AND I MEAN NO ONE IS GOING TO SPEAK ANY SORT OF BULLSHIT ABOUT MY FRIENDS! IS. THAT. CLEAR?”

“What is happening here?”

The sea of spectators of the passionate declaration of loyalty parted to show Daphne, her hands on her hips, with Fred right behind.

Her face, however, didn't have her normal mythic bitchness, but a look of, what appeared to be, concern.

That was when Coolsville High remembered a crucial fact about the Heathers, one they should have not so easily forgot: They were liars. Really.Good. LIARS.

Shaggy’s posture immediately relaxed and he went in long strides in her direction, engulfing her in a hug.

“I’m sorry I doubted you.” he was now crying on her shoulder, his sobs heart breaking “I'm so sorry. I... I thought that they count possibly be so... so cruel to you guys without... without motive” He looked up from his place in Daphne shoulder to look at Fred, them let go of her and went in his direction, now taking him in his embrace. While Fred soothed Shaggy with one hand in his hair, pressing his crying friends face to his red ascot, blocking his view from his surroundings, Daphne put her hand on his back and started slow circular motions.

What, in any other circumstance, would have being quite a sweet moment between friends was broken by the fact that, the moment Shaggy’s face was out of sight, Daphne and Fred’s concerned looks melted away to looks of devilish delight, and the student body now felt a new dread in their souls.

“Don’t worry, Shag.” Fred’s voice was way too soft for the look on his face “We are used to it. It hurts... yes, yes it does, but me and Daph are strong. We can deal with it”

“But you shouldn't have to” Shaggy removed his tear stained face, once again hardened to stone, from Fred’s neck “Sorry for the ascot” he looked miserably to the tear spots on the fabric. Fred’s face once again melted away in a new expressions never seen in his face: A soft smile the recked of compassion.

“It is just an ascot, Shaggy”

That was the confirmation that it was all a very elaborate lie. It was not just an ascot. It was a symbol. The unofficial crown of the King of Coolsville High, together with Daphne’s Red Scrunchie.

Shaggy remove himself from the embrace with Fred and side glanced at the forgotten targets, silently trying to scape since the focus was no longer on them. Shaggy squinted his eyes. That won't do.

Shaggy gave a sharp whistle. Scooby, who had calmed down when the Heathers arrived, decide to lie down, close his eyes and relax a little from his exertion but keep his ears ready for any commotion, was up again in a second. Looking at his owner once again distressed face, Scooby was confused. Didn’t the Red ones arrived already? Looking in question to their faces, once again, in seconds, Daphne and Fred’s faces melted away to new expressions. This ones there were fairly used to. After all they saw it every day in their victims faces: despair.

His humans were in despair. Looking around for the reason, he saw the two threats from before moving away. With a growl of anger, Scooby advanced after them.

It was fascinating, seeing the large dog run, jump and pin down two grow teenagers with relative ease. It was terrifying seeing said teenagers being dragged by their ankles in on only, painful looking, bite. They were throwed like rag-dolls at the Heathers feet, all three of them now truly looking like a complete set. The yellow just seemed to fit in in middle of the red.

“Like, you think I'm done with you? No. You idiots are my example. SO THIS IS FOR EVERYONE TO KNOW. DON’T. FUCKING. MESS. WITH. MY FRIENDS” He glared at the crowd, like he suspected that all of them were guilty of the crime of bulling “poor Fred and Daphne”. Knowing Daphne, that was probably what she told him. With that remark, he grabbed the duo by their bloody ankles, making them both let out a whimper that was immediately silenced by one glare. And he dragged them like they weighted nothing thru the corridor, with the crowd opening up once again, going without stop to the back doors.

The Red Heathers simply smiled like Cheshire cats, and, arm in arm, followed their loyal yellow friend.

They were never seen again, that duo. Some think that they were killed. Buried in unmarked graves just outside of town. Others think that the so much theorised cryptid abilities must have scared them into a new country.

Never the less, the message was clear. Even if Shaggy had gone back to exude joy by his presence alone, with Scooby being a cute pup right beside him. There was always going to be there, just under the surface, that fear. The knowledge that Shaggy was fiercely protective to the point of ruthlessness. That the joy in his eyes could so easily turn into ice.

So Coolsville High learned to fear once again.

Now they feared Daphne’s crocodile tears. Fred’s well crafted defeated looks.

For Daphne and Fred had seen in Shaggy what others didn't. In he’s first day, many have seen an easy target. Someone easy to break.

The King and Queen, however, had seen a Knight and his Dog. Stronger than what first appearances told. Honour bound and loyal. And so, so easy to train.

#scooby gang #scooby doo #scooby!heathersAU #fred jones #daphne blake #shaggy rogers #yellow lantern shaggy #wizard shaggy #a little bit of both #mixed together #Shaggy is always friend shape no matter with universe we are talking about #and that can be exploited #Daphne and Fred are turning into royal bastards the more I write this au #now I will stop tipping because my wrist is starting to hurt

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leafinthewindlanguages · 4 years ago

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mental health diary 2

today i celebrated international sloth day (like the animal) by laying in bed with the window open and listening to the rain while i read a different book.

for languages i taught someone like four letters of the hindi alphabet (i don’t know the hindi alphabet but i had a textbook impulse buy and that was good enough i guess) and i layed in bed with two korean textbooks (tuttle’s continuing korean and talk to me in korean’s phrase pattern book) with my notes thinking i would study but didn’t

last night i finished my book i was reading about the radium girls. it’s a very interesting (and sad) time in american history. i was first introduced to them in 2010 when my school put on a play about their story. i never heard anything else about them until i was looking on my library website and saw they got a new book about the girls so i borrowed it. i obviously expected the story to be sad, but i thought they would get justice, and spoiler they kind of didn’t. we do have worker’s protection rights because of them though.

it was a sad book as the author lets you get to know many of the girls and their personal lives and stories and dreams and then how they suffered and all slowly died pulling pieces of their jaw out of their mouth and the radium ate away at their bones until it was like swiss cheese. anyways that kind of story may further depress some, but for me, those type of stories normally help me out of depression. i’m not sure if it’s because i can say “oh someone has it worse than me” or if i feel a sense of comraderiship (fuck if i can spell that word)

well anyways i’m hoping the spirit of the girls will keep inspiring me to get better and fight like they would have. i highly recommend others to read it, if not for that reason, then because their stories deserve to be known and it’s really something that major corporations have swept under the rug because we’re still dealing with the problem they caused almost one hundred years later

(the book is called The Radium Girls by Kate Moore) (also be aware it has pictures of some of what the girls bodies looked like)

#studyblr #langblr #mental health #radium girls

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kevrocksicehouse · 4 years ago

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Screwball princess Carole Lombard would have been 112 today. Some of her great comedy classics.

Lilly Garland/Mildred Plotka in 20th Century. D: Howard Hawks (1934). Hawks told Lombard that co-star John Barrymore had insulted her (he hadn’t) and channeled her anger into her performance as a Broadway star who, finally fed up with her impresario/mentor leaves him. As he tries to get her for one more role (“What is it this time,?” she asks, “The big drama about Hairpin Annie, the pride of the gashouse?”) it becomes clear that the two egomaniacs need and deserve each other making their inevitable reconciliation one of the least sentimental screwball comedies in the genre.

Irene Bullock in My Man Godfrey. D: Gregory La Cava (1936). It’s almost disconcerting when an actress plays a ditzy blonde with such genius. Irene, a rich and beautiful flake, hires Godfrey (William Powell impoverished and never more debonair) as her butler after winning him in a scavenger hunt. (“Can you butle? We’re fresh out of butlers”) “I went to Venice one night,” she reminisces “and one night I went for a ride in one of those rowboats that the man pushes with a stick. Not a matador. That was in Spain. But something like a matador.” “Do you mean a gondolier?” Godfrey asks. “No, that was the name of the boat!”

Hazel Flagg in Nothing Sacred. D: William Wellman (1937). Lombard played a woman, who finds out she’s dying of radium poisoning and then that she ISN’T dying, but when a newspaper wants to sell her story, and she doesn’t want to be stuck in Vermont all her life, what’s a girl to do? A pretty acid story about the press exploiting tragedy and being exploited in turn before of course, love triumphs. Lombard has never been better.

#carole lombard #20th century #my man godfrey #nothing sacred

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yoongiwillforgiveme · 6 years ago

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Jimin - Not your toy

Warnings: cursing, unprotected sex, nsfw gifs, y/n being a b*tch to chimchim 🤷‍♀️

Hope you like it.

Kay 🌹

“Where do you want to go shopping next baby?” He says trying to hold your hand once he catches up with you outside the store.

The pretty cashier had her eye on Jimin the moment you walked in and watching their interaction made your blood boil. She was openly flirting with him, telling him how much she loved him and bts... that was okay. Then she mentioned how much hotter he looks in person, that was tolerable.

But then she went “Oppa, your v neck is making my heart race. You look really sexy in it". Sigh.

Really? Right in front of you, as if you didn’t exist! And on top of that she was giggling like an idiot. You had enough and decide to leave Jimin behind to pay for your stuff because if you didn’t, you knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your cool.

“Why don’t you ask Minsun? Is that her name? You were pretty friendly back there, you even forgot your fucking girlfriend was standing right next to you” You slap his hand away and start walking towards the parking lot, you’re definitely not in the mood for shopping anymore. Jimin looks around discreetly, he’s worried someone might hear/see your little argument. It’s embarrassing.

“I was being polite, she’s an army. I can’t be rude to my fans, you know that. Please don’t be mad baby. You know it’s not like that.” He says in a hush and sweet voice trying to calm you down. You know he’s right, he can’t be rude to his fans even if they make you or him feel uncomfortable, but still. You feel disrespected and there’s no going back now, no matter what he says or does, you’re angry and your immature ass wants him to know how it feels like to be in your shoes.

So you don’t let it go, you start acting petty and refuse to let him touch you for days. No hand holding, no hugging, no kissing, and definitely no sex.

He has tried everything to make you forgive him. He’s so sweet and patient, he buys you flowers and chocolates, he makes sure to treat you even nicer when you’re in public, he tells you he loves you even when people can hear him because he knows you need reassurance that he’s whipped and there’s no way he’s even thinking about anyone else but you.

Even when he’s going the extra mile to make it up to you, you still won’t give it a rest. You know you’re being annoying and you should stop because he doesn’t deserve an irritable bitch for a girlfriend. But all you can see in your head is a blushing Jimin smiling at the cashier while she was eye fucking him, you can’t seem to let it go.

And sweet Jimin pretty much lets you walk all over him in hopes that eventually things can finally go back to normal. But enough is enough.

When you purposely start flirting with a random guy at the club during your friend’s birthday party later that same week, and you make it a point to look at Jimin in the eyes like saying “how you like it when I do it?” that’s when he finally snaps.

“Time to go home, it’s getting late” he speaks through gritted teeth and grabs your arm with more force than necessary, looking at you with a menacing glare.

You had been staring at some guy across the VIP section for a while now and he noticed how you were flirting the same way you do with him all the time. Biting your lip, taking a sip of your drink and giving him that coy smile, tilting your head and playing with your silky hair. Of course he noticed. He was standing right next to you watching it all unfold for fucks sake!

You wouldn’t even let him touch you so he was just there, by your side like some love sick puppy waiting for his master to give him a little bit of attention. He felt pathetic. He’s sure you don’t even look like a couple right now because while all his other friends are either making out or grinding on their girlfriends while the music is blasting, the most interaction you’ve had all night was him asking you if you wanted another drink and holding your purse when you went to the bathroom with one of your girl friends earlier.

“You can go if you want, I’ll ask one of the girls to take me back to my place, don’t worry” You tell him feigning disinterest just to rile him up even more. You were never actually flirting with that guy, it wasn’t real, you didn’t even find him attractive, he was just the unfortunate soul standing across the room when you decided it was this right time to get back at Jimin, to make him feel as jealous as you were a couple days ago.

”We’re both leaving, you’re going back with me to my place” He growls into your ear and grabs you by the hips with both hands, you can feel his toned warm body pressing against yours deliciously. It’s been days since you’ve been intimate and even though that’s your own doing you can’t help but miss him.

You step back a little to take a good look at him for the first time tonight. He looks gorgeous, blue shirt with the first two buttons undone, those black tailored trousers that make his ass look amazing, his black shiny hair that you can’t wait to run your fingers through.

You can’t help yourself, he looks too good, you miss his touch so much. You close the small distance between you and run the tip of your tongue on his bottom lip before biting it softly. Jimin lets out a low animalistic growl and starts kissing you passionately. He backs you up against the wall and lets one hand travel down to your ass to give it a tight squeeze.

His tongue caressing yours, your lower abdomen rubbing against his crotch, things get heated very fast and you couldn’t care less that anyone can see you shamelessly making out in public right now.

“I’ll get your purse, let’s go” Jimin is the one that pulls away first and he quickly goes to grab your purse from the table where some of your friends are. You see him saying his goodbyes to them and then he comes back to you. Holding your hand as you make your way to the exit so you can finally get the privacy you both need at the moment.

When you get back to the dorms you say hello to Tae who’s still playing video games in the living room and to Yoongi who’s grabbing a midnight snack and is eyeing you both not sure if the look in your eyes means you’re still fighting or about to have sex.

When you’re finally inside Jimin’s bedroom you hope you’ll pick things up right where you left them back at the club but when you see the look on his face you realize how wrong you are.

He paces around the room and runs his hands through his hair several times before speaking.

“What was that about huh? All week you don’t even let me hold your hand but you have no problem flirting with some random guy at the club so you can what? Go back to his place to have sex? Was that the plan? What is wrong with you? I’m not your toy!” He yells at you and you’re sure everyone whitin a 5 miles radium can hear what he’s saying. You know you fucked up, and now he’s the one who’s angry. You start yelling at eachother, both hurt and upset about what you’ve both done.

You start crying when you tell him you felt like shit when he said nothing to make it clear that while he appreciated the compliment he had a girlfriend and it wasn’t cool to say that kind of stuff in front of you. He starts crying because he tells you he felt very insecure seeing you flirt with someone else because he knows you can do so much better than him, the kind of boyfriend who can’t even see you all that often to begin with.

You’re both a mess, and when you see Jimin on the opposite side of the room, not even looking at you or trying to get close to you, you take action.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry baby, I was angry. I just wanted you to understand what it feels like to be me sometimes. It’s so hard Jimin. I love you and it hurts me”

You hold him and he starts crying even harder but he returns your hug anyway. He holds you tight, almost like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he doesn’t. You grab his face with both hands and whisper “I’m sorry” and “I love you” between pecks.

He doesn’t pull back, but you can feel it in his tense body that forgiveness hasn't happened yet. So you turn around and press your back to his chest, you start placing light sensual kisses on his neck and jaw, grabbing a fistful of his hair with one hand and using the other one to guide his down your belly.

“I love you. I need you baby. Please touch me, please... make us feel good”

He hesitates at first, but after a few seconds his hand continues his sinful voyage down your belly and under your dress. Soon he’s pushing up over your panties, rubbing gently over the lace.

Slipping his thumb between your wet folds and moving it upwards to your clit he starts kissing you.

He leads you back towards his bed and starts taking off your clothes, once you’re both naked he gets on top of you and stares at you with bloodshot eyes before leaning down to kiss you again and slipping into you slowly. He’s so sweet, so gentle, so loving, you feel your heart swell every time he says he loves you because you know he means it.

Soon after your first orgasm you find yourself on all fours with him pounding into you recklessly, chasing his own release and extending your pleasure.

"Yeah baby, just like that, you fuck me so good" you feel his thrusts becoming sloppy as you praise him and then you feel the warmth of his cum filling you up. He pulls out after a long time and doesn’t even bother cleaning you up, he just rolls over and holds you close.

“Saranghae jagiya” It’s the last thing you hear before closing your eyes and drifting off to sleep.

“I love you more baby”

#bts smut #jimin smut #jimin x reader #park jimin #bts reactions #jimin reactions

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dementor1112 · 6 years ago

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my mother isn’t cancelled at least, i don’t think so

I can’t stop thinking about the first person to ever put radium into paint, imagining the years they might have spent in the lab, fiddling with chemicals, years in university and apprenticeship leading up to the culmination of a career, an invention that would become a household name, that would light up the dials on the planes that won the great war. I imagine their horror as the first stories came out, as cases went to trial and the newspapers wrote about young girls rotting from the inside out, the jaws falling out of their skulls, the realization that this was their life’s work: that all they’d built was poison. I’ve been thinking a lot about the young soldiers sent into war, kids that boarded their planes to the desert genuinely believing that they were liberating a people and precipitating a future of peace and democracy; I think about them realizing, having broken their minds and bodies for the cause, that the fruits of their labor would be chaos and terror and the disintegration of state after state, that they were means to the deaths of millions. Most of all, I’ve been thinking about my mother, about what haunts and consumes her, and the absolution that I wish I could provide but I cant.

I don’t want to talk about my childhood. I don’t want to talk about the things that made up the first decade and a half of my life, and I don’t think I need to. The details don’t matter. The story is universal, of the trauma that your family can cause you, or maybe it isn’t universal and it just feels that way. The story is about your immigrant parents, your families of color, and if not quite universal it’s something familiar enough to be immediately recognizable, for the shared dark jokes, the shared therapy-speak, the shared impossibility of reconciling all that our parents did for us with all that they did to us. But that’s not the story: the story is about being twenty four and learning how to love your family in a way that’s true to yourself.

I think there’s a journey a lot of us take: you love your family and you’re afraid of them, you love your family but you’re angry, you love your family but you slowly realize that what you had wasn’t just how things were and wasn’t normal. You love your family, but you start to slowly realize the extent to which it all affected you, the ways in which it warped you, you love your family but you discover again and again how much of the things inside your head that cause you pain, the things you do that you hate yourself for, the impulses and fears you can’t explain can all be traced back to them. You resent your family. To be able to heal, you allow yourself to be angry, to be told with clarity that it wasn’t your fault, that what you experienced was real; that your pain and trauma are is valid. You love your family, but you need distance to set and splint everything. And then you’re older and then you’re the age your parents were when they had you, and then your parents reveal themselves as broken battered adults with whom you feel a sense of kinship. You learn to love your family again, in a whole new way, or maybe you don’t. A lot of the time you don’t. I was lucky, I suppose. A lot of us never get to hear our parents own up to their mistakes or see them try to atone for their actions. I don’t want to pass up the chance at healing that offered us, for her sake and for mine.

My mother didn’t believe in psychiatry until I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and not for a while after. Mental illness is hereditary: she’s never seen a doctor and she’s never been diagnosed, but while I was trying to explain my illness to her I told her about what it was like to feel great crashing waves of despair that sucked the air out of my lungs, and as I detailed my thoughts she told me that hey, everyone gets those thoughts, don’t they? She was a high school dropout who married young, and remarried, and had us, and poured all of herself into us and perhaps didn’t know how. I don’t know if she had to fight the same mental horrors that I did, or if she had any help. I don’t want to justify the things she did wrong. I can’t justify them. I can’t reconcile the unambiguous way I’d feel about anyone else I’d heard did the same things to their children, and the way my own feelings toward her are all a set of storm-cloud grays. I don’t know whether it’s because we share the same blood, or whether I’d feel the same empathy for anyone else once I’d known and seen as much of their stories.

On the phone one night with swirling snow outside and the cold sinking into my bones I called my mother because I missed her and I told her things were hard. I don’t usually say this: when you’ve been living with your depression for all your life, saying “I’m alright” when someone asks you how you’re doing is a reflex. Either you really are fine, and in those moments you want to laugh at the question- obviously I’m fine, everything is great!- or you don’t want people to worry. But that night the darkness felt perched at the top of my bed, a senselessly cruel figure that felt as eternal as a god, waiting to take my hand and lead me to death. You know things are bad when you can feel him- whenever it manifests, I’ve always thought of it as a “him”, faceless but solid enough to feel the air move against my skin. The mainstream Islam my mother practices considers suicide forbidden, a route to eternal damnation. I can only see it as a very real possibility as to how my life will end. I hope it doesn’t end that way, but hoping is the best I can do. I didn’t tell her all this. All I could say was that things were hard. But our family had never talked much about our internal lives, and that’s made us good at guesswork.

There were a few seconds of silence and then she burst into sobs. She wished she could just hug me, she said, and that my illness had been such a worry since I’d first told them. She told me that she prayed every day that God would take away my pain and that I’d get better. She’d walked outside to talk to me. She was living with my grandmother- her mother, a once-indomitable woman who survived Churchill’s famine and was known to friends and neighbors as the iron lady, now trembling and frail- who had cancer that had spread through her body and settled in her lungs, a hospice worker that told herself she was a nurse. She couldn’t cry indoors because her mom would worry and she’d been putting up a cheerful front for weeks, and it left her drained. Please don’t die, she begged, please please please, whatever happens, dying like that is a mortal sin and I can’t lose you forever, I can’t lose you in this life and the next and never see you again. You can’t break my heart like that, whatever you do, whatever happens, I can’t lose my son forever.

She regrets how she treated us when we were kids. She tells me this every time we talk and she asks for forgiveness, from me and from God. She told me that she constantly fantasized about finding some kind of time machine, about going back in time and changing things, doing anything anything to spare us, that she wondered everyday if she would have been better to have given us up and entrusted us to someone else altogether. I tell her that I know what it’s like to have hurt people, and to have lived with the knowledge of having hurt people. I don’t wish that on her, and I tell her as much. I don’t want any more pain in our lives. I don’t want the destruction in our pasts continue to perpetuate itself. I don’t want her to suffer, I want her to be happy, I want her to have the life she’s dreamed of having.

When I first told my parents about my mental illness it was shortly after my first time being hospitalized. The pain that led me there was still fresh and for the first time in my life it didn’t feel like pain I deserved. It was pain I could rightfully be angry about. And I was. You know hell, from scripture?, I told them. I lived that, I couldn’t imagine anything worse, I spent days curled up in bed telling myself that hell couldn’t be worse than this, and you’re partially responsible. I wanted them to own up to it and I wanted them to take some kind of responsibility. She shut down completely. She knew she lost her temper at us but every example I brought up made her go white. I couldn’t have hurt you like that, she’d sat on the bed and repeated, I couldn’t have done that, I couldn’t have done that, I couldn’t have done that. At the time it made me angrier at her. Just take responsibility! I’d snapped at her. I just want that! Just take responsibility!

It feels clear now that she was in shock and denial, that she was processing the narrative of her life shifting suddenly under her feet. When I think about trauma that passes itself down generations, all that I feel a sense of loss and waste and destruction. My mother sacrificed so much, gave up so much of herself, all for something that ultimately turned out to have caused immeasurable damage. It’s a painful and existential loss, the feeling that your life’s work went to waste, that all you built were ruins. Every generation we dream about giving our children a life better than our own and too often we realize that all we’ve done is continue that cycle, that the result of decades of their lives was all suffering. It’s how I imagine the lives of the chemists that created radium paint after reading about the radium girls, the first scientists to synthesize thalidomide as reports of deformed babies made the newspapers. It’s why I can’t stop thinking about them. Every time I see parents in the news that had their children die as a result of their mistakes, it’s how I imagine them: haunted, fantasizing about finding some kind of time machine.

Regret doesn’t work retroactively. Nothing will ever make me whole the way I could have been. I don’t want to excuse my mother, just to understand her, and forgive her, and make my peace with her presence. I want to be kind to her and to myself. I want the cycle of pain to stop.

My mother already had three children by the time she was my age. I know that I, the person I am right now, wouldn’t be able to look after one child, let alone three. I know that for a fact. So how could I expect her to know what she was doing? If I woke up tomorrow with kids, I don’t believe that I would have caused them the same kind of harm or subjected them to the same violence, but I also know I wouldn’t have devoted myself to them, or spent as much time on them, or given up my life and my career and the things I wanted for them.

I know that, and I could choose that. Did she have the same choice? Growing up in a small conservative town in the 1990s where people were expected to start their families in their early twenties, with limited options available to her, how much of a choice did she really have? I knew so little about the world at twenty-one, the age she had me, let alone at nineteen, when my oldest sibling was born. I know so little about the world even right now. Could she really have had any idea what she was getting into? Did she find herself, one day, trapped in a reality that she didn’t really know how to cope with?

I can’t cancel my parents.

I can never figure this one out. I believe my parents deserve forgiveness for damage on a scale that I don’t think I would give similar grace to for anyone else, including myself.

Calling accountability to our changing norms “call-out culture” has always felt disingenuous to me, a way to negatively frame collective social repudiation of actions that cause harm to others. It made sense to me that it ultimately makes the world a better place. It felt clean and logical. But love is the quantum unit where the clean convictions of morality break down. When I’m this close none of it makes any sense anymore. Grace for my family isn’t consistent anymore — my family is no more human than anyone else, so how could I possibly argue that my parents are uniquely deserving of absolution?

I can never figure this one out. How can I possibly develop a consistent sense of who or what deserves redemption? Would I be able to tell myself that they deserved redemption if they’d been anyone else, if I’d only known of the things they did to someone else instead of living through it myself? Would I have described that as giving them a pass for their actions? I probably would have. Why does giving someone a pass feel right, then, when it coexists with the empathy you have for those you know and love?

Does love and loyalty blind people from dealing fairly with loved ones who deserve more censure? Or does knowing someone deeply and personally create the empathy that makes you see their remorse as suffering, that makes you weigh their remorse as pain, that makes you weigh their pain against the pain they caused others, and makes you believe they deserve to be redeemed, that they’ve earned some kind of redemption? My parents aren’t more human than anyone else. My parents aren’t unique in having rich inner lives, being full of contradictions, having consciences. My parents aren’t unique in feeling guilt or remorse for irreversible harm.

Is there a point at which empathy tells us that the pain of their remorse and their attempts at change can be considered sufficiently redeeming, that they deserve good things again? Or is it all apologism, some kind of Stockholm Syndrome where knowing and caring about someone makes you willing to give them grace that they don’t deserve? Do people earn grace? Is remorse a form of pain we should empathize with, or should we consider it just desserts, worthy of no particular sympathy? Should the empathy I feel for the real pain I can see my parents feeling as remorse translate to other humans, who have done wrong and are making an effort to change and are remorseful? Everyone I love is no more or no less human than anyone else. The same morality should apply.

I can never figure this out: is it individual? Do only I get to forgive or not forgive someone who caused me serious harm? Should the outside world forgive them because I have, or would that be giving them a pass that they don’t deserve as long as the ruins that they made of me continue to walk the earth? Do even I have any right to give them absolution when I’m not the only one they’ve hurt — they hurt my siblings too, and if I could ever forgive them for myself, can I possibly justify being an outsider and giving them that absolution? Is there even any kind of standard? I don’t know. But it feels like a very important question that may have no real answers, and being close to it, both loving the people who hurt someone and being the subject of their harm, makes it much harder and messier than the abstraction of acquaintances or public figures. I stay up nights trying to find an answer. I’ve never been able to figure it out.

In my first semester of grad school, I told her I was struggling more than I had in a while and that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to manage this, that it was hard being alone, in a new country, with nobody I knew around me, how I felt like I just wasn’t cut out for this, that I never would be. We didn’t usually talk much about our feelings but I was struggling, and I think she could hear it in the dull, stumbling monotone of my voice. And she told me about how, when my family had first moved into a new country, back when I was still a teenager, that she was convinced she’d never be able to drive, that she felt like she just wasn’t cut out for it, that people who were able to drive just had something she didn’t. Years later, my sister had a terrifying encounter on a night out, and that very day she just sat down with the book, learnt everything, and she ended up passing her driving test. She became such a confident driver that even your father was impressed, she said.

She told me that she believed that if you wanted something enough, God would put in a favor for you, that a lot of the time she felt that she had some kind of godmother looking out for her. We don’t have godmothers where we grew up so when she said this she meant a fairy godmother, like in the Disney movies she’d watched with us on repeat when we were children. She’d learnt every single word to Hercules because as a toddler I loved it so much we watched it every day. She told me later that she’d gotten sick of Hercules. She did it anyway.

Ever since she was a child, she told me, she’d always dreamed of having a house of her own, where she wouldn’t have to share a roof with her extended family. Something out of the magazines. She got to have that house when we moved to Singapore and she threw herself into it with abandon- that house was my baby, she said. She met a contractor that she became friends with in a cab, where he moonlighted as a driver, and he helped her to renovate on a budget. That was her godmother, she said. She told me that, in the years after I’d left the country for college, she’d had to move out suddenly, and that somehow, miraculously, she found a place in the same building complex that was available to move into immediately. She told me she’d been talking to my dad about selling the house- her baby!- to pay for me to go to college, before she could even move in. I got the e-mail confirming a full-ride scholarship the next week. She got to have things that felt impossible when so many times things felt like they might fall through. She believed that grad school would be the same for me: no matter how impossible it felt, God would help and I’d get there.

But even with all that she feels that her parenting ledger is indelibly in the red, and I think she needs to know she’s not irredeemable. She tells me that she prayed constantly for her quick temper to ease, to not fly off the handle, and she hopes I’m proud of how now, no matter what happens, she never gets angry. She tells me a friend cheated her out of half her savings, and she didn’t feel any anger. She hoped he’d do something good for himself with the money and she’s thankful for the life she has. She’s religious, so she believes in some form of karma: whatever happens to her is God’s will, and life is a test. Misfortune is atonement. Anger would be failing the tests of her commitment to atonement.

I hate seeing her hurting. I hate hearing the haunted feeling in her voice. At moments it feels like inflicting hurt upon others is some original sin. Like some Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the story of our family is predestined, and we are doomed to repeat ourselves over and over, and something tied into the fabric of our souls ensures that good intentions eventually devolve into inflicting pain. I was angry and said things that still haunt her. I don’t know if any real good that came out of my anger is worth having crystallized an existential crisis that consumes her every day. I don’t know how to live with having caused that kind of pain, and so I understand. I don’t wish that on her. I don’t wish that on either of us.

I try to comfort her. I remind her that at the end of the day, she did raise two pretty decent kids, both with college degrees. She tells me that if a measure of how well you raised your kids was how they treated the people around them, she must have done something right. I see her looking after her own mother, giving up any dreams she had to move back in to look after her, and I wanted her to know how much I admired that kind of self-sacrifice. I don’t tell her that I admire her strength in choosing to watch her mother die just to make her final months better, that I didn’t think I would have the strength to do the same. My grandmother is in her late eighties and my mother is only forty-five. I don’t want to think about it. I hope I don’t have to.

She tells me, and herself, that she thinks she did spend time playing with her kids, doing fun things with us, taking us on vacations and trying to spend time with us, and that was something. As she spoke, she kept hedging herself, telling me every other sentence that she wasn’t trying to avoid responsibility by saying this. It breaks my heart to see my words having become part of her own self-talk. In the final reckoning, she says, she doesn’t know if any of it mattered when she’d caused so much pain. I wanted to tell her that I felt her remorse and that I didn’t want punishment, that I loved her, but our family had always been so bad with emotions that I couldn’t verbally say “i love you, mom” on the phone, much as we both needed it. But healing is trying. Sometime after we hung up I texted her an I heart u emoji.

My parents moved to a bigger, wealthier country when we were children. Their parents moved from the country to the city before they were born. I’m here now, one step further, the first of our family to make the move to the west, inheriting the hope that any children I have will get to grow up in a place where they’ll have better lives than me, three generations living out our own versions of the immigrant dream, of struggles and sacrifices that our children would first take for granted then grow to understand.

When I was younger I thought that I would never have children, that I’d never risk my unresolved demons fucking up an innocent child. Now that I’m older, I’m more hopeful that the trauma we’ve had inflicted on us and in turn inflicted on others, generation after generation, would become something soft and gentle and beautiful. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put in the amount of effort and sacrifice and myself into my children that my mother did, but I’m hopeful that my children will never feel fear, that they’ll get to make mistakes, that they’ll be at ease with me. I’m hopeful that, as I try to build a childhood for them in a family that expresses their emotions, that talks about their lives, that tell each other they love them without hesitation, hearts more open than I ever have, that I’ll learn to be those things too.

#trauma #family issues #islam #mental health

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group1thoughts-blog · 7 years ago

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America Needs Feminism

Women make up 50% of the population on Earth. We’re strong, smart, and capable of many things. Marie Curie was a scientist who made the very important discovery of Radium in the early 1900’s. This major discovery paved the way for medical devices like x-ray machines. While this was monumental, the barriers to Madame Curie were even greater. Women didn’t have jobs outside of the home. Their jobs were to take care of their husbands and children. They were denied access to voting, jobs, and even their most basic human rights. Marie Curie is an excellent example of why we need feminism. This isn’t about demeaning men, it’s about being equal as a man. Even though it’s 2017, we’ve come so close but we keep getting pushed back. Let’s take a look into why we need feminism in the 21st century.

It’s a man’s world. As much as we like to make this joke in movies and TV it’s the truth in reality. While women are able to vote, work, and make other decisions based on what they believe it, we’re still being pushed around. Many women of color are restricted by voting due to gerrymandering and ID laws. Women may work hard, but our pay is still less compared to our male counterpart. It may seem like women have control over their own being, but this is far from the truth. Politically, the United States government is led by the male majority. (105 women in Congress, 21 women in Senate, 84 women in House of Representatives, and 5 delegates for American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands.) These numbers count for a small amount of each Chamber being served. This lack of women in each Chamber leads to a small portion of decisions regarding women’s health in the control of men.

Our healthcare has always been under scrutiny. Under Obama the United States passed the Affordable Care Act. It was a big step for universal healthcare for all in America. While it may not have been the best to begin with, it was a way for us to start. It’s estimated that 20 million people had signed up for healthcare with the Affordable Care Act. The ACA was a trailblazer for health care for many who couldn’t obtain it. It allowed children to stay on their parent’s plans until they were 26, and made insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions. Another health care perk from the ACA was that women were granted free birth control. A staple for many women across the country let alone the globe. This doesn’t just prevent unwanted pregnancy it’s an actual medication for millions of women facing issues related to their bodies. It’s frowned upon by some religions to even use contraceptives leading to the debate on whether your provider has the right to refuse birth control coverage. It’s a war, and it’s getting ugly. This issue had died down for a bit, but now with a new administration in town it’s back on the table. The Supreme Court never reached a decision on where employers should stand. There are 9 Supreme Court Justices, and out of them 3 are women. So here we have 6 men making that decision on what an employer can do when it comes to allowing birth control. That hardly seems like it would be fair. A man should not dictate what a woman can and cannot do with herself. If a woman needs birth control, then she should have access to it without any issues. Keeping it free will help women from not only unwanted pregnancies, but to help keep major diseases from becoming worse. An example would be Endometriosis. A disease that I unfortunately suffer from. I know firsthand the horror of having this and the constant pain it causes me. The treatment for Endometriosis is birth control. I’m not using it to be promiscuous, I’m simply using it so I can be a functioning adult. Without it I’ve had to endure horrible days and nights of pain where I can’t move, can’t eat, and can’t sleep. I depend on birth control for the rest of my life. Men cannot have Endometriosis, nor can they get pregnant, so why must a group of men make this decision for women?

It’s more than just the birth control debate. It’s our lives at stake here. Women are sexualized to no end. Movies, music, and TV have become worse over the years. Our bodies are under constant scrutiny. Kim Kardashian was made famous for her sex tape. A sex tape. She’s worth millions of dollars, but she’s constantly being picked on by the male, and female, population for what she looks like or what she talks about. No one stops and thinks about who she is as a person. It all comes back to her sex tape from over ten years ago. She’s a mother, a sister, an aunt, and a friend. People are criticizing her for her every little move. We have to stop and think about how we treat men. James Deen is one of the leading male adult film stars in the business. He’s got the looks, and he’s got the stamina to be an adult film star. He’s cool, he’s hot, he’s trendy, and no one bats an eye if he does something wrong. In fact, in recent years Deen has been accused of raping women and degrading them along with being physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive. Not just to one women but multiple; women he’s been in long term relationships with, and women on set. This came out in later 2015, and it’s now coming close to two years later. No one talks about it. There was to be a documentary regarding the allegations, but Deen allegedly took the signed release forms for the documentary. It was set to premiere on Showtime in July 2016 with an update regarding more allegations. The documentary is currently in limbo due to a lawsuit involving Deen. People are so quick to assume that these women are lying about these allegations. They are just looking for easy money. Like Kim Kardashian, which many people she married Kanye West simply due to his wealth. Women are constantly second guessed for what they say and do. Kardashian could come out and say she was sexually abused by a man, but many would say she deserved it. Why? Because it’s Kim Kardashian and she made a sex tape once so she is automatically lumped into the category of being “slutty”.

This behavior isn’t just limited to celebrities. Even on a local level we’re constantly blaming the victim for what’s happened to them. In the documentary “Audrie and Daisy” we see two teenage girls that are in high school in different parts of the United States. Both girls we’re raped at parties, with pictures of them being distributed around their school. The girls we’re labeled as “sluts” and harassed continuously. Due to the harsh treatment by her classmates Audrie Pott committed suicide by hanging. She was 15 years old. The juveniles in Audrie’s case were charged and sent to juvenile hall for their actions. But Audrie would not be able to return to life and live. The behavior conducted by the boys we’re the direct reason that Audrie Pott is not alive anymore. Simply because she was drunk and she wanted it, right? Daisy Coleman was 14 years old when she was sexually assaulted at a party with her 13-year-old friend Paige. Daisy was sexually assaulted by her older brother’s 17-year-old friend at the party while being unconscious after consuming too much alcohol. People stood by and watched, some filmed the event. When it was over, they took Daisy and Paige back to Daisy’s house. Paige made it inside, but Daisy was still passed out from all the alcohol consumption. She laid in the cold wet lawn until morning when her mother found her. Due to the town being close nit, and the 17-year-old being a star athlete, students and adults we’re quick to say that the girls we’re lying. The video of the sexual assault we’re never turned into the police as they believed they had been deleted. Daisy left school after continuous harassment at school and over social media. Her mother lost her job, and their house was set on fire. The accused student pleaded guilty to a less counter of misdemeanor count of child endangerment. It’s believed that his grandfather, a former state representative, was the reason for the lack of reasonable punishment. He received two years of probation with a delayed sentence of four months if he violated his probation terms. Daisy and her family moved shortly after their house was set on fire. She now travels around the country to help educate others about the dangers of sexual assault and cyber bullying.

With the stories of sexual assault, along with the health care debate, we need feminism to help put women first. A woman's ability to make her own decisions without the judgment of a man is important for the world. We’re humans, we bleed like men do, and we can work just as hard as men. Our voices are strong, and we’re more than just a sexual object to keep men happy. We deserve better than what we’ve been given.

Ashley Tacey

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dulwichdiverter · 7 years ago

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Dulwich at war

What was life in Dulwich like during the First and Second World Wars? Our writer investigates

By Baruch Solomon

These days, a night out with my friends usually consists of a few beers and a curry, but in 1939 it might have meant playing with live grenades in Belair Park. The following year, we could have been shooting at enemy aircraft from Dulwich and Sydenham golf course.

More likely, we’d have been bored stiff guarding the ammunition dump in Dulwich Wood in the pouring rain; or patrolling the streets to make sure that no chinks of light were showing through anyone’s curtains.

Later, when the rocket bombs fell, we’d have dived for cover with the customary stiff upper lip, but we might have wondered why so many of them seemed to land on Dulwich.

In fact, it’s likely that the first explosive device to hit Dulwich fell in 1916, landing next to Peckham Rye Common and damaging a local tramline. The exploding shell turned out to be friendly fire from an anti-aircraft gun on One Tree Hill. It had been aimed at a Zeppelin airship that was no doubt on its way to bomb inner London.

Speaking of early bombing raids, one of the most celebrated World War One pilots was Sydney Vincent Sippe, a former pupil of Dulwich College. On November 21, 1914, he and two other pilots flew more than 120 miles across mountainous terrain into enemy territory to bomb hangars containing Zeppelins. This was just eleven years after the Wright brothers had made their maiden flight and such feats were almost unheard of.

Another former pupil, Grahame Donald, had a miraculous escape a few years later. He fell out of his Sopwith Camel at 6,000 feet after his safety belt snapped. He wasn’t wearing a parachute, but while falling he collided with the somersaulting plane, managed to grab a wing and climbed back into the cockpit.

But Dulwich was also a focal point for those who showed a different kind of courage; people like Sarah Cahill and Arthur Creech Jones who formed the East Dulwich branch of the No-Conscription Fellowship and campaigned tirelessly on behalf of those who refused to fight on moral grounds.

Conscientious objectors faced ridicule, contempt and open hostility for refusing to participate in the war. Their fate was determined by local tribunals. In Camberwell, a Mr Sayer, dismayed by the unsympathetic attitude of some of his colleagues, was reported to have declared: “Members were biased and did not exhibit the judicial attitude required of them… Some members were continually muttering such remarks as ‘They ought to be shot, or ought to be hanged.’”

World War Two had a much greater impact on civilian life. As was the case elsewhere, local people demonstrated an enormous commitment to the war effort, volunteering as firefighters, air raid wardens, nurses, local defence volunteers and auxiliary policemen.

These services could be severely under-resourced, especially at the start of the war. For the first nine months, Mr R Dupraz ran air raid wardens’ post 60 from his living room at 47 Pickwick Road in Dulwich Village.

As late as July 1940, the mayor of Camberwell put out an appeal for guns and binoculars for what was to become the local Home Guard. A week later he was reported to have lamented: “All I have received is one pair of binoculars.” In moments of such pathos, it is hard not to be reminded of Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army.

But while Dulwich braced itself for war and possible invasion, William Joyce (later nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw) and his brother Quentin had a very different agenda. During the late 1930s they were known for organising Nazi rallies outside Dulwich Library, but the authorities were more concerned about their association with suspected German agent Christian Harri Bauer.

Quentin worked in the Directorate of Signals for the Air Ministry, which may have given him access to sensitive information. MI5 was alerted when his landlady contacted the police about a letter in his waste paper basket containing a list of British cruisers and aircraft. Conversations about obtaining rare stamps followed, which MI5 took to mean sensitive maps that could be used by enemy forces.

When war was declared, William Joyce defected to Germany and his infamous if absurd radio broadcasts earned him the moniker Lord Haw-Haw. Quentin was arrested in Bristol where presumably, he had been trying leave England by boat.

He was deemed a security risk and interned on the Isle of Man until 1943. While there, his repeated protestations of innocence were compromised by his association with characters like Dr Branimir Jelić, a Croatian nationalist with strong Nazi sympathies who, upon his release, moved into the showy but rather eccentric Toksowa Hotel on Dulwich Common.

The first bombs fell on Dulwich in August 1940 and air raid sirens soon became an almost nightly occurrence. Audrey Waters was with her sister in the Odeon at Goose Green when a siren sounded. Worried about their mother, they ran home along East Dulwich Road.

She recalled: “As we ran, we heard the noise of an airplane and looked back and there was this plane diving straight at us. We threw ourselves over a coping into a garden to get out of the way.

“We heard the sound of a machine gun, and then the airplane swooped back up again and flew off… The street was deserted apart from us because they were all in the air raid shelter so the pilot was obviously shooting at us, two young girls running home.”

Audrey went on to work in the radium room of a factory on Streatham Hill, painting radium on compass and gun dials. Fascinated by the paint’s luminosity, she stopped wearing her mask at work. “At night, in the blackout, I used to be lit up like a Christmas tree, with all the fluorescence over my hairline, neck, throat and hands,” she said.

Tragically but unsurprisingly, Audrey became seriously ill some years later and had to have a tumour in her throat removed.

There were numerous public shelters in and around Dulwich, but many residents erected their own. The Ellen family from Turney Road found that their Anderson shelter became increasingly damp as the winter of 1940 approached: “Dr Brown said we could stay in the house and risk being hit by a bomb, or use the shelter and be sure of dying of pneumonia.”

As well as bombs, people faced the daily struggle of putting food on the table in the face of rationing and food shortages. Some people formed pig clubs, where they all contributed waste food scraps to feed the pig. When it was slaughtered the meat would be shared out.

“We always had something when they killed a pig,” recalled Nora Young, “and once we had a leg. We invited relations and neighbours to our pork party, 10 of us in two sittings; what a treat it was.”

But amid all the wartime austerity, one Dulwich teenager struck it rich and moved into the house of her dreams on Court Lane. The year was 1940 and the young lady’s name was Anne Shelton.

She was a “forces sweetheart” who melted the hearts of servicemen at military bases up and down the country. She had her own radio show, Introducing Anne, which ran for four years and was mainly broadcast to troops in North Africa. She’s perhaps best remembered for her signature tune, Lili Marlene.

In the summer of 1944, the Germans started firing rocket bombs at Britain. Dulwich was especially badly hit and this was no accident. The Germans aimed their rockets where they thought they would do the most damage.

However, British intelligence officers were able to use their knowledge of the Enigma code to feed misinformation to the Germans about where their rockets had landed, leading them to aim their rockets south-east of central London in the mistaken belief they were hitting their targets.

The worst single incidence of loss of life occurred on November 1, 1944 when a V2 rocket landed on the corner of Friern Road and Etherow Street, killing 24 people.

Understandably the rocket bombs increased British anger at the Germans, who they regarded as “simply not playing the game”. Clergymen were by no means immune from the desire for retribution.

The outraged pastor of Lordship Lane Baptist Church declared that “Hitler and his hounds from hell will lose their lives. They deserve to for they have never given God or man a chance.”

Meanwhile the Reverend James Capron of All Saints Church in West Dulwich seemed to be more upset about his stained glass windows than any humanitarian implications: “It all makes a lot of work for everybody with discomfort and inconvenience, which no doubt the Germans intended, but it has not and will not win them the war. But it has stopped a lot of talk about the Germans being fundamentally nice gentlemen, unfortunately led by gangsters.”

However, an excerpt from St Mary’s Church magazine in Peckham had a more dovish tone: “A competition in barbarism would hardly save the population from suffering, shorten the war or add to the hope of a better world in the days to come.”

There are numerous reminders in and around Dulwich of those people, military and civilian, who lost their lives during the two world wars. Outside what is now the Deeper Life Bible Church on Lordship Lane, there’s a stone plinth erected by the Dulwich Volunteer Battalion – an early version of the Home Guard – in honour of those who died in World War One.

At what is now Dulwich Community Hospital, several thousand World War One soldiers were cared for after being injured at the front. In the grounds, there’s a monument to 119 soldiers who didn’t survive. In 2013, the Dulwich Society erected 12 memorial plaques at sites where German bombs caused significant loss of life.

But there are other reminders too, and they aren’t all about people who were killed. There’s a blue plaque on Anne Shelton’s former residence at 142 Court Lane. The site of the exotic if strange-sounding Toksowa Hotel has lost none of its exclusivity. It became Hambledon Place, a very upmarket gated community that was once home to Margaret and Denis Thatcher.

But one of the least aesthetic reminders of Dulwich’s wartime legacy has to be the concrete gun emplacement at the top of One Tree Hill. It certainly isn’t made any prettier by the empty bottles and beer cans that have sometimes graced its environs. Perhaps we should be grateful however, that we live in an age when all-night parties have replaced all-night air raids, and when uncollected litter is a greater nuisance than unexploded bombs.

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tragicbooks · 8 years ago

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Need a reminder that your voice matters? Check out 21 quotes from women who spoke up.

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History is full of women who bravely fought to make a difference in the world.

As activists, journalists, or fighters, women have stepped up to combat social injustice and defend their freedoms. Others worked their way into “boys clubs,” helping to pave the way for others to follow.

A Woman Suffrage Party parade through New York in 1915. Image by Paul Thompson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

But while women have always been working toward making the world a better place, their voices were not always heard or acknowledged. And some of these women still do not get the recognition that they deserve in classroom history textbooks, even though their contributions are undeniable. All of them are inspirations.

Here are 21 quotes from just a few notable female leaders about how to make a better world:

1. “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Journalist, suffragist and progressive activist Ida Wells Barnett (1862-1931). Photo by R. Gates/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Wells-Barnett was an important African-American journalist and activist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She also marched in Washington, D.C., in 1913 for universal suffrage.

2. “I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.” — Nancy Wake

Code-named "The White Mouse," Wake was one of the most decorated Allied servicewomen of World War II. She joined the resistance when the war broke out, and is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers and downed airmen.

3. “Don’t sit and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” — Sarah Breedlove

Breedlove, who later became known as Madam C.J. Walker, was one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire, making her fortune by creating a line of specialized hair products for African-American hair.

4. "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." — Mother Teresa

Charity worker Mother Teresa seen in her hospital around the time she was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress. Photo by Mark Edwards/Keystone Features/Getty Images.

The founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor, Mother Teresa is one of the most important humanitarians of the 20th century. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonized as a saint in 2016.

5. “When you find a burden in belief or apparel, cast it off.” — Amelia Bloomer

A 19th-century women’s rights activist, Bloomer helped transform the way American women dressed, advocating for corsets and petticoats to be abandoned and shorter skirts with pants underneath. She also established one of the first newspapers written, edited and published by women: The Lily.

6. “If it is true that men are better than women because they are stronger, why aren’t our sumo wrestlers in the government?” — Kishida Toshiko

A writer and women’s rights activist, Toshiko is also known as Japan’s first female orator. She is famous for her “Daughters in Boxes” speech that criticized a family system that confined women at home.

7. “You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.” — Aung San Suu Kyi

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was detained for 15 years. Photo by Drn/Getty Images.

Activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was a vocal critic of Myanmar’s dictator U Ne Win, and she initiated a nonviolent movement toward achieving democracy and human rights in her country. More recently, she led the National League for Democracy to a majority win in the country’s first openly contested election in 25 years.

8. “Energy rightly applied can accomplish anything.” — Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who wrote under the pen name Nellie Bly, was a brave American journalist known for her investigative and undercover reporting, including her 1887 expose on the treatment of asylum patients at Blackwell’s Island.

9. “To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves.” — Carrie Chapman Catt

She was an activist instrumental in the suffrage movement to get women the right to vote. Chapman Catt also served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and founded the League of Women Voters.

10. “Truth is powerful and it prevails.” — Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Born a slave, Sojourner Truth became a popular spokesperson for abolition and women’s rights. She is renowned for her “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech.

11. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

We all know that Curie is a famous physicist who conducted important research on radioactivity that led to the discovery of polonium and radium. But did you know that she was twice the winner of a Nobel Prize? She also advanced women's role in the scientific community.

12. “When you get, give. When you learn, teach.” — Maya Angelou

Angelou was an acclaimed American poet, actress, writer, and activist. She is perhaps best known for her memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

13. "We will not have failure — only success and new learning." — Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria ascended to the throne just weeks after her 18th birthday and went on to have the second-longest reign of any queen in British history. Historians often associate her reign with imperialism but also with cultural expansion and advances in industry, science, and technology.

14. “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” — Malala Yousafzai

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.

Yousafzai, an advocate for girl’s education, made headlines after she survived being shot in 2012 by the Taliban. The incident didn’t stop her from continuing to speak out for education. In 2014, she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

15. “You must come to terms with the reality that nothing outside ourselves, be it people or things, is actually responsible for our happiness.” — Mary Edwards Walker

Walker was a doctor at a time when female physicians were rare, was arrested several times for dressing in men’s clothing, and became a vocal women’s rights activist after the Civil War.

During the Civil War, she worked as an assistant surgeon and was captured by the Confederates. She became the first and only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor — though Congress tried to take it back in 1917. She refused to return the medal, proudly wearing it until her death, and President Jimmy Carter reinstated her honor in 1977.

16. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” — Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 22, 1956. Image by Gene Herrick/AP Photo.

One of the most famous civil rights activists is Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in 1955. She was a key player in initiating the civil rights movement in the United States.

17. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."— Eleanor Roosevelt

First lady Roosevelt was also a writer and humanitarian. She is credited with changing the role of the first lady through her active participation in American politics.

18. "Believe in yourself, learn, and never stop wanting to build a better world." — Mary McLeod Bethune

Bethune was one of the most prominent female African-American educators and civil rights activists at the start of the 20th century. She was known as the "First Lady of the Struggle."

19. “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2005. Photo by Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images.

As president of Liberia, Sirleaf is the first elected female head of state in Africa. She also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

20. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.” — Helen Keller

Keller, who lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old, was an educator, a leading humanitarian, and one of the co-founders of the ACLU.

21. “If you don’t have an idea that materializes and changes a person’s life, then what have you got? You have talk, research, telephone calls, meetings, but you don’t have a change in the community.” — Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Shriver was an advocate in the worldwide struggle for rights and acceptance for people with intellectual disabilities. She founded the Special Olympics in 1968.

Whether they were marching for civil rights, resisting political oppression, or advancing women’s position in the workplace, these women — and many others — fought the good fight.

The 1911 Solvay conference in Brussels. Marie Curie is the only woman in the photograph. Image by Benjamin Couprie/Wikimedia Commons.

They remind us that change is possible. Their words continue to resonate and inspire today.

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