Its Always Amazing To Watch Adults Discover How Much Changes When They Dont Treat Their Perspective As

it’s always amazing to watch adults discover how much changes when they don’t treat their perspective as the default human experience.

example: it’s been well-documented for a long time that urban spaces are more dangerous for kids than they are for adults. but common wisdom has generally held that that’s just the way things are because kids are inherently vulnerable. and because policymakers keep operating under the assumption that there’s nothing that can be done about kids being less safe in cities because that’s just how kids are, the danger they face in public spaces like streets and parks has been used as an excuse for marginalizing and regulating them out of those spaces.

(by the same people who then complain about kids being inside playing video games, I’d imagine.)

thing is, there’s no real evidence to suggest that kids are inescapably less safe in urban spaces. the causality goes the other way: urban spaces are safer for adults because they are designed for adults, by adults, with an adult perspective and experience in mind.

the city of Oslo, Norway recently started a campaign to take a new perspective on urban planning. quite literally a new perspective: they started looking at the city from 95 centimeters off the ground - the height of the average three-year-old. one of the first things they found was that, from that height, there were a lot of hedges blocking the view of roads from sidewalks. in other words, adults could see traffic, but kids couldn’t.

pop quiz: what does not being able to see a car coming do to the safety of pedestrians? the city of Oslo was literally designed to make it more dangerous for kids to cross the street. and no one realized it until they took the laughably small but simultaneously really significant step of…lowering their eye level by a couple of feet.

so Oslo started trimming all its decorative roadside vegetation down. and what was the first result they saw? kids in Oslo are walking to school more, because it’s safer to do it now. and that, as it turns out, reduces traffic around schools, making it even safer to walk to school.

so yeah. this is the kind of important real-life impact all that silly social justice nonsense of recognizing adultism as a massive structural problem can have. stop ignoring 1/3 of the population when you’re deciding what the world should look like and the world gets better a little bit at a time.

This.

But yes, by all means, talk about historical and societal context. Analyze the nuances of the language, the subtleties of the sexual choreography. I absolutely challenge you to do that—

—and then I challenge you to do it without having a text to refer to.

Good fucking luck, my friend.

This is the most persuasive argument I’ve heard that we need to keep open access to works which many might find offensive or harmful. Sold. And also kind of surprised, because I hadn’t heard it from quite that angle before.

Now, there’s a whole separate conversation about ways to have the debate about those offensive works; about the burden that often falls on marginalized people who find a work harmful to ask that it not to be performed in public or promoted as awesome by influential people or paid for, thereby supporting the production of more, and how that burden frequently compounds the experience of marginalization. Or about the limits of free speech when hosting that speech might directly put at risk the security and safety of people in the community that hosts it.

But those are conversations not related to whether works should exist on AO3 or be findable through tags. And I sense that part of the problem with this debate is that it’s all getting conflated. Which is why I love this post.

the working title of this was “censor this, bitches“ which I decided was maybe was a little undiplomatic so I decided to give it this massive passive-aggressive title instead

yeah, yeah I know I already reblogged “autobiography” earlier today which is basically about a thousand times more exactly what I want to say than any essay could possibly be BUT then I went and actually read what people are arguing here and you know what

SOOOOOOOO

There are two things that are being collapsed in this argument that we really, really cannot afford to collapse. That is:

For AO3 to be a sustainable project long-term, there needs to be a comprehensive policy in place designed to prevent its users from harassment and abuse; and

Some content that people would like to host on AO3 is, to some people, vile or offensive.

Both of these things are true. However, it does not follow from (1) that we need to regulate or restrict the content of the works hosted on the Archive to ensure the content referred to in (2) doesn’t make it onto the Archive. People seem to be taking it for granted that (1) means banning all that stuff in (2), and that’s wrong.

(cw for high-level references to the existence of rape, underage sex, and anti-Semitism; as well as one marginally more specific reference to kinky sex)

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Hugh Hefner was a giant in publishing, journalism, free speech and civil rights. He was a true original and very progressive, and decades ahead of the rest of the U.S. He always hired African Americans at a competitive and fair wage. Hef insisted on interracial casting of his TV show, even when Southern stations threatened to boycott. Hef was the first.

Hefner long before he became sort of a doddering caricature was a STRONG voice for Civil rights and free speech issues. RIP Hugh.

y’all are missing out on the real dream fancast for aziraphale and crowley

This is a revelation. I’m a woman who very rarely gets compliments (or harassment) from random guys, or from obviously sexually/romantically-interested women. But since I grew up knowing I don’t have much control over whether or not I’m objectified, and knowing being seen for my body goes along with not being seen as equal or powerful, I’m super sensitive about feeling like I’m being objectified, including sometimes snapping at my male partner for crossing a line. I never thought that I might just have more experience receiving and giving body compliments.

But it’s true, I get plenty of validation about my body from female friends and random women on my outfits, hair, etc. I never thought about how lonely it must feel to never have that from my friends. If I tally them up, I probably have dozens of hours and hundreds of phrases’ worth of practice in giving compliments that feel nice to other women and getting compliments that feel nice to me. If I’d never had that, how would I express myself when I found someone attractive? How would I ask for attention to my own appearance, taste in clothes, body?

(note: I have no romantic or sexualized experience myself, so I admit *some* of these points rely entirely on secondhand stuff and media)

One thing I think is not talked about very much is that straight men live pretty much desexualized lives if we’re not actually having sex at that moment, and then there’s not much room to be the object rather than subject.

As I’ve said before, we men don’t have clothing options for “dressing sexy” in masculine clothing (there is cross dressing but that is different). There’s no male equivalent to the short skirt or low cut top. There’s no male lingerie that isn’t seen as a joke.

Further, we just don’t get validation for our sexuality outside of a sexual partner. We are almost never complimented for our looks or sexiness from platonic friends like women are, especially same sex friends.

There really aren’t many straight male role models for raw aesthetic sexiness in mainstream culture (besides unnaturally muscled men). In fiction, male characters are almost never attractive for embodying sexiness but rather for doing things (saving the world, being extremely witty, being a genius, winning the tournament, etc.). Their sexiness is non-aesthetic and sometimes is in spite of their aesthetics.

Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of men aren’t even called physically hot and sexy by their own sexual partners, who themselves focus on personality. There’s not much room to fulfill the role of passive sexism object for you partner for many/most men.

I think it is telling that a lot of porn for men ignores the man’s personality and has a woman just throwing themselves at the man, overcome with lust.

Also there the fact that women seem to rarely approach men and some seem to often expect the man to do most of the sexual escalation, especially in the early stages.

We talk about women of color or women who are disabled being sexualized, but we don’t talk about how all straight men are desexualized and denied the ability to be sexualized object.

Michelle Obama: "The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut."

Our FLOTUS Forever sat for a conversation in Denver yesterday to a crowd of mostly women and discussed many of the things she advocated for as First Lady, including nutrition and education for girls, but she also touched on the racism she experienced.

WFCO President and CEO Lauren Casteel commented that Obama broke a glass ceiling by becoming the first black first lady. She then asked which of the falling glass shards cut the deepest.

“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” she said, referencing being called an ape and people talking about her bottom. “Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color.”

She said she can’t pretend like it doesn’t hurt because that lets those who do the hurting off the hook.

“Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut,” she said. “We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up.”

But Obama said women should own their scars. Referring to failure, she said those wounds hurt deeply but they heal with time. If women own their scars, they can encourage younger girls who are getting their first cuts.

(cont. Denver Post) 

I like this.

I understand putting on a brave face for bullies.  Don’t give them the power or satisfaction of letting them know they’ve hurt you.  It’s why we teach kids “Sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”  The theory is if you ignore them, they’ll leave you alone.  The bully wants to hurt you.  Their goal is to affect you and watch you react.  If you don’t give them that reaction, then they haven’t achieved their goal and they lose interest.  Maybe they realize bullying is a waste of their time and they find something else to do.

But that doesn’t mean words don’t hurt unless you allow them to.  That’s the RuPaul School of Don’t Be So Sensitive that I’ve never subscribed to, and I think what Michelle Obama said is important because it’s not really a conversation we usually have with our kids.  Somewhere along the line, bullies stopped needed a reaction.  They troll because it makes them feel good about themselves.  They feel better about their shortcomings by putting someone else down.  They try to make others feel small so they can feel bigger.  It doesn’t matter if the subject reacts or not – they’ve gotten what they wanted from just having an audience to yell at, part of which will support them and part of which will react based on the general impropriety of the trolling.

Michelle Obama is coming at this admitting that she was hurt.  That hurt didn’t stop her from working toward her goals and it didn’t make her into a horrible person, but it’s okay to acknowledge that hurt.  Other girls who are hurt by words can then look at this powerful woman and say She was affected so it’s okay that I am too, but it didn’t define her, and it doesn’t define me.

It’s a fine line to walk between acknowledging your pain and wallowing in it, but obviously Michelle Obama is the best example.  She’s probably taken more fire than any other woman on the planet and look at her, still gracious, still positive, and still inspiring others while not ignoring the negativity that was thrown her way.  Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t love a good ol’ nasty tell-all where she gives the business to all her haters, but she’s not wired that way, and we’re still so blessed to have her.